Assessment of workplace air concentrations of formaldehyde during and before working hours in medical facilities

Abstract

Workplace air concentrations of formaldehyde (FA) in medical facilities where FA and FA-treated organs were stored and handled were measured before and during working hours and assessed by the official method specified by Work Environment Measurement Law. Sixty-percent of the total facilities examined were judged as inappropriately controlled work environment. The concentrations of FA before working hours by spot sampling were found to exceed 0.1 ppm in some facilities, and tended to increase with increasing volume of containers storing FA and FA-treated materials. Regression analysis revealed that logarithmic concentrations of FA during working hours by the Law-specified analytical method were highly correlated with those before working hours by spot sampling, suggesting the importance for appropriate storing methods of FA and FA-treated materials. The concentrations of FA during working hours are considered to be lowered by effective ventilation of FA-contaminated workplace air and appropriate storage of FA and FA-treated materials in plastic containers in the medical facilities. In particular, such improvement by a local exhaust ventilation system and tightly-sealed containment of FA-treated material were urgently needed for the dissecting room where FA-treated cadavers were prepared and handled for a gross anatomy course in a medical school.

A strategy for the reduction of formaldehyde concentration in a hospital pathology laboratory

“…Additionally, we asked the workers not to block the ventilation systems. Another previous study reported that appropriate storage was effective for the reduction of formaldehyde concentrations in the workplace . Therefore, we also asked the workers not to keep the waste fluid tank open to prevent formaldehyde diffusion.…”

“…The work environment measurement system in Japan suggests that these assessments be conducted for two continuous days, if possible. If the work environment is measured in a day, the calculation formula taking the empirical between‐day variation into consideration is used; the evaluation of the workplace can be more severe if measured in a day, as there might be less between‐day variation in the continuous 2‐day measurements. Therefore, in order to assess the actual improvement, the work environment should be measured for two continuous days.…”

“…There are several reports that have shown that engineering controls, such as effective ventilation systems, can lower the formaldehyde concentration in the workplace . In this study, in order to improve the ventilation system, the length of the exhaust ducts from the laminar tables was adjusted and the push‐pull ventilation was covered.…”

Changes in Work Practices for Safe Use of Formaldehyde in a University-Based Anatomy Teaching and Research Facility

“…Within anatomy laboratories storage facilities have been identified as a location with high exposures. Higashikubo and co-workers [ 27 ] reported average pre-shift FA concentrations of 450 µg/m 3 in Japanese anatomy facilities and reported an increase of FA exposure with installed storage capacity. Leakage of loosely sealed containers was identified as the primary source of this background.…”

An Integrated Air Monitoring Approach for Assessment of Formaldehyde in the Workplace

“…In the European Union, instead, the number of workers exposed to FA above the background level is calculated to be 1.7 million, 175,380 of them in Italy [5] , [6] . Although most exposed workers are foreseeably engaged in chemical and plastics factories, the highest mean levels of exposure were actually recorded in the health-care sector [6] , [7] , [8] , [9] .…”