All,
Glad to know we were on the right track with the gas phase portion, but we (or at least I) hadn't considered the splash or hand-to-face contact, so I've added that consideration to our response. Thanks for the input!
Sincerely,
Jack Reidy (he/him)
Research Safety Specialist, Assistant Chemical Hygiene Officer
Environmental Health & Safety
Stanford University
484 Oak Road, Stanford, CA, 94305
Tel: (650) 497-7614
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU>
On Behalf Of Jeffrey Lewin
Sent: Friday, June 26, 2020 6:53 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Face masks and solvents
And, of course, the cloth face covering doesn't necessarily need to be splashed, it could be from (gloved) hand to face covering contact.
A slide I've added to my Responsible Conduct of Research safety presentation on glove use highlights BSL-2 users were observed to be touching their face regularly:
[slide]
Glove Safety
From the article "The influence of risk perception on biosafety level-2 laboratory workers' hand-to-face contact behaviors"
Of the 93 subjects, 67 (72%) touched their face at least once, ranging from 0.2-16.0 HFCs/hr (hand-to-face contacts/ hour)
contact with the nose was (44.9%)
forehead (36.9%)
cheek/chin (12.5%)
mouth (4.0%)
eye (1.7%).
[/slide]
Citation:
On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 9:38 AM Stuart, Ralph <Ralph.Stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu> wrote:
> We have received several questions from labs about the risk of solvent vapors being "trapped" in cloth face masks.
Personally, I am more concerned about masks becoming contaminated by a splash of a solvent or other chemical than the masks impacting fugitive vapors. A spill onto a mask could create a longer exposure to the chemical than a maskless situation, particularly if the wearer is unaware of the splash.
One reason this scenario occurs to me is an experience I had at another school when a Teaching Assistant in a teaching biolab called me because she had spilled a gallon of Coomassie Blue onto her pants. She wanted me to clean up the spill because she was busy working with the students. When I arrived 30 minutes later, she was still wearing the contaminated pants and her skin was turning red from the continued exposure to the acetic acid / alcohol mixture. She only took the pants off after I provided her with tyvek coveralls to wear. She insisted on staying in the classroom until the class was over.
And when I was a lab tech working with inorganic acids, a line of holes developed in my pants at bench height; this was not an uncommon experience in our group.
The point is that cloth face masks are more likely to retain liquids than vapors in a problematic way.
- Ralph
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO
Environmental Safety Manager
Keene State College
603 358-2859
ralph.stuart**At_Symbol_Here**keene.edu
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Jeff Lewin
Director of Chemical Laboratory Operations
Research Integrity Office
Laboratory Operations
205 Lakeshore Center
Michigan Technological University
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