Occupational Exposure to Halogenated Anaesthetic Gases in Hospitals: A Systematic Review of Methods and Techniques to Assess Air Concentration Levels

Cattaneo, A (通讯作者),Univ Insubria, Dept Sci & High Technol, I-22100 Como, Italy.
2023-1
Objective During the induction of gaseous anaesthesia, waste anaesthetic gases (WAGs) can be released into workplace air. Occupational exposure to high levels of halogenated WAGs may lead to adverse health effects; hence, it is important to measure WAGs concentration levels to perform risk assessment and for health protection purposes. Methods A systematic review of the scientific literature was conducted on two different scientific databases (Scopus and PubMed). A total of 101 studies, focused on sevoflurane, desflurane and isoflurane exposures in hospitals, were included in this review. Key information was extracted to provide (1) a description of the study designs (e.g., monitoring methods, investigated occupational settings, anaesthetic gases in use); (2) an evaluation of time trends in the measured concentrations of considered WAGs; (3) a critical evaluation of the sampling strategies, monitoring methods and instruments used. Results Environmental monitoring was prevalent (68%) and mainly used for occupational exposure assessment during adult anaesthesia (84% of cases). Real-time techniques such as photoacoustic spectroscopy and infrared spectrophotometry were used in 58% of the studies, while off-line approaches such as active or passive sampling followed by GC-MS analysis were used less frequently (39%). Conclusions The combination of different instrumental techniques allowing the collection of data with different time resolutions was quite scarce (3%) despite the fact that this would give the opportunity to obtain reliable data for testing the compliance with 8 h occupational exposure limit values and at the same time to evaluate short-term exposures.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
卷号:20|期号:1
收录类别:SCIE
语种
英语
来源机构
University of Insubria; IRCCS Ca Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico; University of Milan; University of Padua
被引频次(WOS)
0
被引频次(其他)
0
180天使用计数
4
2013以来使用计数
4
EISSN
1660-4601
出版年
2023-1
DOI
10.3390/ijerph20010514
学科领域
循证公共卫生
关键词
waste anaesthetic gases hospital staff inhaled anaesthetics volatile compounds operating rooms healthcare workers
WOS学科分类
Environmental Sciences Public, Environmental & Occupational Health