Background:
Occupational exposure in automotive coatings manufacturing remains a major industrial health concern due to volatile organic compounds (VOCs), isocyanates, and mixed solvent aerosols generated during spraying, mixing, curing, and cleaning operations. Exposure conditions are particularly variable in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where limited engineering controls, insufficient ventilation performance, and inconsistent occupational hygiene implementation contribute to unstable indoor environmental conditions and elevated worker health risks across different regulatory systems.

Objectives:
This review aims to develop an integrated systems-based interpretation of occupational exposure in automotive coatings SMEs by comparatively evaluating exposure pathways, engineering control effectiveness, and occupational risk governance across the European Union, the United States, and Ukraine.

Methods:
A narrative critical review was conducted using peer-reviewed literature, occupational hygiene studies, environmental exposure investigations, and regulatory documents retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, EU-OSHA, OSHA, and Ukrainian legislative and technical sources published between 2000 and 2025. The review focused on occupational exposure to VOCs and isocyanates in automotive coatings environments, with SMEs serving as the primary analytical context due to their known limitations in exposure monitoring and engineering control implementation. A structured comparative synthesis was applied to examine relationships between exposure dynamics, ventilation and engineering control performance, and regulatory implementation capacity across jurisdictions. The analysis integrated evidence from exposure science, indoor environmental engineering, and occupational risk governance to identify system-level determinants of exposure variability and implementation gaps in SME-dominated industrial settings.

Results:
The analysis demonstrates that occupational exposure in automotive coatings facilities is governed not only by chemical hazard properties, but by the interaction between regulatory implementation, engineering control effectiveness, ventilation stability, and organizational capacity within SMEs. Across all examined jurisdictions, measured exposure conditions frequently diverged from formal occupational exposure limits, particularly during high-emission operations such as spray-painting, solvent mixing, and cleaning processes. The review identifies SMEs as structural amplifiers of exposure variability due to insufficient local exhaust ventilation, inconsistent maintenance of engineering systems, and limited occupational hygiene infrastructure. A novel typology of SME exposure-control environments was developed, consisting of controlled-stable, compliance-driven, fragmented-control, and reactive SMEs. Comparative synthesis further identified three distinct occupational exposure governance paradigms: preventive and engineering-oriented (EU), compliance-oriented (USA), and transitional hybrid (Ukraine). The findings additionally indicate that conventional time-weighted exposure metrics insufficiently capture episodic peak exposures relevant to respiratory sensitization risks associated with isocyanates.

Conclusion:
This review proposes a systems-oriented conceptual framework for interpreting occupational exposure variability in automotive coatings SMEs by integrating regulatory governance, engineering controls, and indoor environmental dynamics. The findings demonstrate that effective occupational risk reduction depends more strongly on implementation capacity and ventilation performance than on formal regulatory compliance alone.