Assessing exposure to ethylene oxide and evaluation occupational health impacts in medical products sterilization filed

ABSTRACT

This study aimed at evaluation of ethylene oxide through measuring its, concentration in each section chamber at the field sample and to evaluate associated hematological and immunological changes in addition to p53 cancer lung antigen. A cross sectional study was conducted on three groups of workers in sterilization at Vacsera Company. All workers were subjected to full occupational history and blood samples collection using EDTA-prefilled tubes for CBC-Blank tubes for serum collections and sodium citrate 1.6 ml filled for PT and PTT sample collection. Directly exposed workers had higher prevalence of headache that was present in 40% of the directly exposed group compared to 20% in the partially exposed group, and 6.7% in the indirectly exposed group with highly statistically significant difference in between. Chest tightness was more frequent among directly exposed group [33.3%] compared to partially exposed [6.7%] and indirectly exposed [6.7%] with highly statistically significant difference between the studied groups. On the other hand there is no statistically significant difference among the studied groups as regard other clinical data. Immunological markers CD3 and CD4 were lower among directly exposed workers compared to the other two groups with statistically significant difference. as regard p53 gene mutation 100% of the studied workers show negative results. Direct exposure to ethylene oxide for f 25-40PPM/8 hours shift work. Increase the risk to acute symptoms as headache and chest tightness. CD3% and CD4% are decreased than in normal control. No gene mutation was detected in P53 among the studied subgroups