Semi-Quantitative Assessment of the Health Risk of Occupational Exposure to Chemicals and Evaluation of Spirometry Indices on the Staff of Petrochemical Industry

Abstract

Increasing growth of industry and industrial productions caused the exposure of more than 4 million people with a wide variety of chemicals in the world (1,2). So, the number of chemicals detected at present is over 18 million and 1000 to 2000 new chemicals are added to this number annually which toxicology information is available currently only for 10000 types of chemicals. Some of these substances are new compounds and mixtures which their toxicological properties have not been studied and may be dangerous for humans (3). Exposure to these substances without considering the precautionary principles and control measures, while working with them, can cause numerous health effects on people. Health effects depending on the type of chemicals, route of entry, duration of the

Chemical risk: state of the art of chemical substances exposure assessment

“…H. Dazi, et al [29] carried out a cross-sectional study in one of the petrochemical industry complexes, in a special area of Assaluyeh, Iran, workers are exposed to various dangerous chemical factors. During the evaluation, the SQCRA method and spirometry were also used through a series of experiments in pulmonary function tests (PFTS).…”

“…Information was collected on the toxic and / or dangerous effects of chemical reagents, vapor pressure or particle size of the chemical, OT / PEL radio, safety measures, amount of material used per week and amount of time worked per week. Of the materials used by workers 48.14% present a low chemical risk, 29.62% medium chemical risk, 18.51% high chemical risk and 3.7% very high chemical risk [29]. Similarly, M. H. Beheshti et al [30] used the SQCRA method in the operating unit of an Iranian petrochemical company with high amounts and exposure to various chemical contaminants.…”

Comparative Analysis of Health Risk Associated with Occupational Exposure to Formaldehyde in Public and Private Mortuaries in Rivers State, Nigeria

“…The health risks associated with the exposure of morticians in both public and private mortuaries to formaldehyde were further assessed using a semi-quantitative approach [14, [18][19][20]. The exposure rate and risk rate were computed using Equations (4) and (5) respectively.…”

“…The formaldehyde exposure level (FEL) in the mortuaries was calculated using average concentrations of formaldehyde and the average duration each worker is exposed as well as the frequency of exposure as given in Equation ( 4 The exposure rating (shown in Table 1) are represented in an ordinal scale of 1 to 5 categorized in the order of severity of exposure, so that 1 indicates very low exposure, 2 indicates low exposure, 3 indicates moderate, 4 indicates high exposure and 5 indicates very high exposure [19]. The exposure indices were rated and the risk calculated using Equation ( 5) [15,[19][20].…”

“…These levels of daily dose exposures have been found to cause acute health effects [25]. Thus, morticians in Rivers State are in danger of adverse health effects due to formaldehyde exposure as also reported by [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”