Centre for Environment and Health, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, Kapucijnenvoer 35 - 6th floor box 7001, 3000 , Leuven, Belgium, Belgium.
Janssen Pharmaceutical NV, EHS Janssen Campus Belgium, Janssen Pharmaceuticalaan3, B-2440 Geel, Belgium.
Ann Work Expo Health. 2017 Oct 1;61(8):975-985. doi: 10.1093/annweh/wxx054.
Assessing dermal exposure of workers to noxious chemicals becomes increasingly important in industrial settings. Among various chemicals, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are widely used in industrialized countries, but still there are no validated methodologies able to accurately quantify skin exposure. In this study, we developed a sensitive methodology based on activated charcoal cloth (ACC) to quantitatively assess skin exposure to 181 VOCs. The majority of the VOCs (156) showed a constant desorption efficiency (DE) of ~100% over the studied concentration range. Seven VOCs showed a concentration dependency for the DEs, which we described by a Dubinin-Raduskevich desorption isotherm. For 18 compounds, the DEs were situated below 80% but showed to be constant over the concentration range. All tested VOCs showed a good storage stability on ACC, especially at -80°C storage. Only for n-pentane there was a decrease of ~40% when it was stored for a month. In a controlled environment test, ACC has shown to reflect well the increasing concentrations of VOCs in the air with a high linearity (R2 ≥ 0.812, except for gamma-butyrolactone where R2 = 0.570). In this study, we show that ACC is a suitable sampling material for quantitatively assessing dermal exposure to 181 VOCs in terms of sensitivity and DE. This method will allow more studies that are detailed on dermal exposure, which will lead to a better assessment of skin exposure in occupational settings.
评估工人接触有毒化学品的皮肤暴露情况在工业环境中变得越来越重要。在各种化学品中，挥发性有机化合物（VOCs）在工业化国家被广泛使用，但仍没有经过验证的方法能够准确地量化皮肤暴露。在这项研究中，我们开发了一种基于活性炭布（ACC）的敏感方法，用于定量评估皮肤接触 181 种 VOCs 的情况。大多数 VOCs（156 种）在研究的浓度范围内表现出恒定的解吸效率（DE）约为 100%。七种 VOCs 的 DE 表现出对浓度的依赖性，我们用杜宾-拉达斯克解吸等温线来描述。对于 18 种化合物，DE 低于 80%，但在浓度范围内保持不变。所有测试的 VOCs 在 ACC 上表现出良好的储存稳定性，尤其是在-80°C 储存时。只有正戊烷在储存一个月后，其 DE 下降了约 40%。在受控环境测试中，ACC 很好地反映了空气中 VOCs 浓度的增加，具有很高的线性度（R2≥0.812，除了γ-丁内酯，R2=0.570）。在这项研究中，我们表明 ACC 是一种敏感且解吸效率高的采样材料，可用于定量评估皮肤接触 181 种 VOCs 的情况。这种方法将允许进行更多关于皮肤接触的详细研究，从而更好地评估职业环境中的皮肤暴露情况。
