Assessing chemical exposure evaluation method in laboratories education at university

—a case study in an analytical chemistry experiments using chloroform—

Abstract

This study aimed to examine exposure evaluation procedures that can be used to prevent exposure to chemical substances in university experiments. Measurements were conducted to assess four types of exposure evaluation methods in students performing analytical chemistry experiments. These measurements, A and B measurement, personal sampling method, personal exposure monitoring guideline, and video exposure monitoring, are mainly used in the risk assessment of chemical substances in the workplace. Based on the characteristics of each evaluation objective, appropriate exposure evaluation procedures were examined, considering the characteristics of the student experiments. The results suggest that it is possible to simultaneously assess health hazard risk and the work environment and to perform exposure assessment efficiently and effectively by collecting samples using personal samplers and evaluating the quantitative values according to the Personal Exposure Monitoring Guidelines and the evaluation calculation method of the personal sampling method. In addition, we found that this simultaneous implementation of video exposure monitoring can identify high exposure operations that require improvement and can extract residual risks even where no improvement is required.