Abstract
Occupational exposure to cancer chemotherapy drugs is a concern of many health care workers. By their nature, most chemotherapy drugs are extremely toxic and pose a health threat to pharmacists and nurses who come in contact with them through admixing, administering, and disposing of the drugs. Both gloves and gowns afford protection to the health care worker if suitable types and materials are used. This article reports on the testing of several different polypropylene-based protective gown materials for permeability against a battery of four cancer chemotherapy drugs (carmustine, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and cisplatin). The drugs were selected on the basis of their reported permeabilities from previous studies and were tested using a bacterial mutation assay as the indicator of permeability at exposure times from 5 minutes to 4 hours. Testing was done at ambient temperature using the concentration of each drug to which the health care worker would normally be exposed. Of the eight types of gowns tested, two, the Kimberly-Clark Experimental and the Digit-Safety Protective gowns, were completely resistant to the four drugs at all time periods. One sample of the Kimberly-Clark reinforced gown demonstrated immediate breakthrough of one of the 2-hour samples with doxorubicin, but was otherwise impermeable at all other times. The two Chemo Safety[rgrave] gowns were permeable to the four drugs. The remaining three gown materials demonstrated some permeability, mostly minimal, for two of the four drugs. As seen in other studies, carmustine was the most permeable of the drugs tested, permeating five of the eight materials. The results of this study indicate that certain modifications to the polypropylene gown material can produce a product that offers significant protection to the health care worker handling cancer chemotherapy drugs.
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Thomas H. Connor
Connor, T.H.: An Evaluation of the Permeability of Disposable Polypropylene-based Protective Gowns to a Battery of Cancer Chemotherapy. Drugs. Appl. Occup. Environ. Hyg. 8(9):785–789; 1993.