Laboratory and Hospital Evaluation of Four Personal Monitoring Methods for Glutaraldehyde in Ambient Air

Abstract

Four industrial hygiene monitoring methods were studied in the laboratory and in a hospital to evaluate their effectiveness in measuring glutaraldehyde concentrations in ambient air. The sampling devices evaluated included a silica gel tube, a direct reading handheld glutaraldehyde meter, a DNPH- (2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine) impregnated passive diffusion badge, and a DNPH-impregnated filter cassette. The accuracy and precision of the different methods were determined in the laboratory. The methods were evaluated using dynamically generated glutaraldehyde air concentrations over the range of 0.05-0.4 ppm. The badge, silica gel tube, and filter cassette methods were found to be accurate under controlled laboratory conditions. The handheld meter did not respond to the glutaraldehyde test atmospheres. The methods were compared in a hospital environment. During the hospital study the performance of the handheld meter could not be demonstrated because the concentrations of glutaraldehyde were below or only slightly above the manufacturer's stated 0.03 ppm limit of detection. Statistically significant differences were found between the badge, silica gel tube, and filter cassette methods, but the differences were small enough to be acceptable for industrial hygiene monitoring.

Respiratory Cancer Risks Among Workers With Glutaraldehyde Exposure

“…These methods produce generally comparable results. 15 Personal exposure monitoring average levels ranged mostly between 40 to 80 ppb for a timeweighted 8-hour average (TWA) and for short-term exposure levels (STEL) for 15 minutes in the exposure monitoring period from 1977 onward. We found little variation in exposure level based on job type or period of exposure, and STEL measurements were similar in level to the TWA measurements indicating continuous low-level exposure with few peaks.…”

Odor and chemesthesis from exposures to glutaraldehyde vapor

“…The outcome was based upon responses of an HP 1050 HPLC to the derivative glutaraldehyde-bis-DNPH from samples of glutaraldehyde obtained by OSHA method 64 of sampling and analysis (OSHA 1998;Wellons et al 1998). Figure 1, left side, shows the function for the response of the HPLC to known amounts of glutaraldedhyde in liquid.…”

Statistical Methods for Establishing Equivalency of Several Sampling Devices

“…Applications of this type are numerous in the occupational hygiene literature. Some recent references include England et al, (1) Rudzinski et al, (2) O'Brien et al, (3) Spicer and Gangloff, (4) Savely et al, (5) and Wellons et al (6) Some of these authors have used the t-test to compare the means of the log-transformed data. Spicer and Gangloff (4) consider an application of Spearman's rank correlation for checking the agreement between microbial data from two comparison zones.…”