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Abstract
In this study, the accuracy of the assessment of the contamination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on skin of workers based on exposure pad measurements is determined. The exposure pad is a round monitoring device (Ω 60 mm) with a flexible polypropylene filter as adsorbing material (Ω 18 mm) pasted at six skin sites. Thirteen woodpreserving workers and 10 primary aluminum workers participated in this study. Pyrene and benzo(a)pyrene were used as marker compounds.
Exposure pads significantly underestimate the contamination on skin as measured with skin wipes. Among the woodpreserving workers we found on average 2.3 times more pyrene on natural skin (95% CI: 1.2–4.2, N = 13) than on the exposure pads. For the aluminum workers this skin/pad ratio was of the same order of magnitude (1.7, 95% CI: 1.1–2.5, N = 10 × 2). The skin/ pad ratio for benzo(a)pyrene was on average 4.8 (95% CI: 2.8–8.1) and significantly higher than the ratio for pyrene (p < 0.001). Moreover, the estimate of the pyrene contamination on the total body surface based on exposure pads at six different skin sites was on average 4.5 times lower than the contamination as measured with a full body coverall (95% CI: 2.5–7.9, N = 7). This study shows that the method for a quantitative assessment of dermal skin contamination, based on six exposure pads, systematically underestimates the contamination on total skin and is not very precise. Despite this, the assessment method appears useful to distinguish workers, work locations, and work environments in terms of dermal PAH contamination, because of the strong variation in dermal PAH contamination measured among workers of several work environments.