Biomonitoring of industrial styrene exposures

Abstract

Worker exposure to styrene in two fiberglass boat plants was evaluated using conventional sampling techniques. The use of expired air and urine metabolite concentrations as indicators of styrene exposure is evaluated. The concentration of mandelic acid, a styrene metabolite in urine, is quantitated for workers without and with intermittent personal respiratory protection. A urinary Biological Limit Value is determined for exposures to the Threshold Limit Value of styrene.

Biological monitoring of styrene metabolites in blood.

“…In spite of this oc-72 currence the obtained correlation coefficient between nonconjugated styrene glycol and styrene uptake during the preceding 5 h (r = 0.90) was acceptable. It was comparable to that reported for the correlation between mandelic acid and phenylglyoxylic acid excreted in the urine and the uptake or air concentration of styrene (2,4,7,9,11,12,13,14). An equivalent correlation (r = 0.91) was seen between the total amount of styrene glycol and the preceding uptake.…”

Urinary styrene in the biological monitoring of styrene exposure.

“…This phenom enon suggests the existence of a body burden of styrene on Thursday. Such an accumulation of styrene during the workweek was not unexpected accordin g to pharmacokinetic data (29,30) and has also been reported earlier (7,14,31). We also observed that the intercept of the regression line of the afternoon was nearly 40% higher than that of the morning regression line.…”

“…1-1 (3). Other exposure tests, such as styrene in expired air (4)(5)(6)(7) or in blood (8)(9)(10), present some limitations, and available data on field application are limited (1). Finally, the measurement of minor metabolites, such as hippuric acid or 4-vinylphenol, is still not considered reliable.…”

Evaluation of half-mask respirator protection in styrene-exposed workers

“…Additional factors in¯uencing the toxicokinetics of solvents are sex, age, body build, nutritional status, diet, ®tness, work load, inter-individual metabolic variability, previous exposure and/or co-exposure to other solvents, etc. [4,5,8,10,16,18; for a recent review, see 14]. As a consequence, a fairly large inter-individual variability of the internal dose can be expected in workers wearing respirators exposed to the same environmental concentration of a solvent, as was demonstrated for styrene exposure [2,5,6,13,15,19].…”