抄録
Objectives
Ethylene oxide (EO) and formaldehyde (FA) are widely used at hospitals as a disinfectant and a fixative. The purpose of this study is to estimate probabilities of occupational exposure limits (OELs) exceedance and overexposure to EO and FA.
Methods
Personal air sampling was performed during full work-shift per each subject three times. Mixed effects models were applied to examine the within- and between-worker variance components and to test if statistically significant differences in exposure occurred among hospitals. In order to test exceedance of OELs and probability of overexposure, we applied variance component analyses and wald-type tests.
Results
None of the personal observations showed more than OELs for 8-hr time-weighted averages (TWA); however, there were significant differences in variance and distribution of the exposure to both chemicals among hospitals. While estimates of probabilities of OEL-exceedance and overexposure were generally small in overall hospitals for both chemicals, one showed unacceptable probabilities of both exceedance and overexposure, indicating that heterogeneous exposure may lead to overexposure to FA even at the same working group.
Conclusions
We measured personal air samples of EO and FA at workplaces three times per each. While overall and individual levels of exposure were below OELs with 8-hr TWA perspectives, we found there were significant possibilities of both OEL exceedance and overexposure.
