Comparison of Personal Pollution Monitoring Techniques for Use in the Operating Room

Abstract

Three personal pollution monitors (adsorption tubes, diffusion dosimeters and evacuated bottles) have been tested, in routinely used operating rooms and under controlled laboratory conditions, for their accuracy and reproducibility relative to one another and to measurements by infra-red spectroscopy. All the techniques provide time-weighted average measurements of pollutant concentrations. Tubes and dosimeters measure halothane with greater accuracy than that required by N.I.O.S.H. regulations, but neither technique can measure inorganic pollutants such as nitrous oxide. The prototype evacuated bottles tested are unsatisfactory at their present stage of development for the measurement of both halothane and nitrous oxide concentrations. We believe that, at the present time, surveys of operating room pollution can best be carried out using adsorption tubes of diffusion dosimeters for personal halothane concentrations and a portable infra-red spectrometer for measurement of background nitrous oxide concentrations.

Evaluation and control of occupational health risks : an integrated strategy applied to chemical, physical and ergonomic stressors

“…J Occup Med 1990:32:1112-1116 ring of inhaled air with diffusion samplers as done by Gardner [1989] is also probably not adequate. Adsorption tubes cannot be used because sampling pumps are not allowed in the sterile zone [Campbell et al 1980, Cox et al 1984. Furthermore, it appears that N^O adsorbs poorly to most well-known adsorbents.…”