Protecting Emergency Response Personnel from Chemicals of High Priority by Deriving Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health (IDLH) Values Using Refined Methodology

Details

• Personal Author:
  Dotson, G. Scott ; Maier A ; Parker AL
• Description:
  The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has been investigating methods to improve the derivation of Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health (IDLH) values. IDLH values are 30-minute atmospheric concentrations of any toxic, corrosive, or asphyxiant substance that, via inhalation exposure, poses an immediate threat to life or would cause immediate or delayed irreversible adverse health effects or would interfere with an individual's ability to escape from a dangerous atmosphere in the event of a respirator failure. We developed a process to prioritize IDLH development for high priority chemicals of specific interest to emergency response personnel (i.e., chemical terrorism agents or industrial chemicals subject to emergency or uncontrolled releases). The prioritization process included weighted scores to account for metrics of exposure potential, toxicity, and a variety of secondary considerations (such as toxicity data availability and existence of other acute exposure guidance values). We evaluated the impact of a refined weight of evidence approach described in our prior work on methods for developing IDLH values. The refined approach was applied to 20 case study chemicals from the list of agents identified by the prioritization process. The resulting preliminary IDLH values and the rationale for their derivation is presented and contrasted to the IDLH values that would have been developed using a default IDLH calculation approach. Lessons learned from these case studies are used to inform further refinements in the IDLH derivation methods as they apply to chemicals of interest to homeland security applications and emergency preparedness. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Biological Factors Chemistry Emergency Responders Environmental Monitoring Hazardous Substances Health Personnel Hypersensitivity Lung Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Respiratory Hypersensitivity Respiratory System Respiratory Tract Diseases Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety

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• Keywords:
  Biological-factors Chemical-hypersensitivity Chemical-indicators Chemical-properties Emergency-responders Employee-exposure Exposure-assessment Exposure-levels Exposure-methods Lung-irritants Medical-personnel Occupational-exposure Occupational-hazards Occupational-health Rescue-workers Respiratory-hypersensitivity Respiratory-system-disorders Risk-analysis Risk-factors Toxic-effects Toxic-materials Toxins

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• ISSN:
  1096-6080
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  Ohio ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  EID - Education and Information Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  108
• Issue:
  1
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20035264
• Citation:
  Toxicologist 2009 Mar; 108(1):311
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2009
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  The Toxicologist. Society of Toxicology 48th Annual Meeting and ToxExpo, March 15-19, 2009, Baltimore, Maryland
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:c34efea54504a3e6703c393613641bae7d038a2ce542d1cc79afbbeca007980157d6078d219595f165e7d2ea77d14ad45869ff121fbc26f44b9aee1e358b3b43
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/187179/cdc_187179_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.58 MB ]