Bill,
There is no established regulatory exposure limit for BME - No PEL – that would be a nod from NIOSH and adopted by OSHA – and no established REL from NIOSH.
No TLV established by ACGIH either.
AIHA does have a WEEL for this compound, 0.2ppm, an 8 hr TWA with a skin notation.
NIOSH does have some REL’s for close analogues of BME, but these are analogs and not for the specific compound (difficult to make a case). In the case where there
are NIOSH REL’s for BME analogs, OSHS has nothing established for those same compounds.
I have mentioned all of these regulatory limits in my original email – in addition – I mentioned that low concentrations of BME actually enhance biological activity
and motility and have no observed adverse effect.
So, is allowing some BME to permeate the lab on a Monday morning dereliction of duty?
When I return on Tuesday morning, there are no odors anywhere, not the regulated medical waste receptacle, not the satellite accumulation area – so they have
demonstrated great prowess in handling BME at the bench and no evidence in their wake.
I have bigger fish to fry and I don’t want to stop the lab from doing this work, especially if other do it in that fashion and no one has any complaints.
Perhaps asking the lab to plan BME bench work ahead of time is a good control – such as on Mondays when the lab is empty.
The law is the law – in this case there is not any – we must ask what is the right thing to do.
James
From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety [mailto:DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU]
On Behalf Of misterbill21225
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2019 4:07 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] β-mercaptoethanol (βME)
Not able to check right, but I'd start with the ACGIH TLV and an SDS check to see just how hazardous. If not much maybe a bench-top filtering hood ?
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy , an AT&T LTE smartphone
-------- Original message --------
Date: 3/26/19 14:10 (GMT-05:00)
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] β-mercaptoethanol (βME)
>Not pleasant, but was it a hazard?
The odor of BME beyond "not pleasant" - it's disruptive. I had an experience at a previous institution where fugitive BME odors led to 3 building-wide fire alarms in a year as people thought the smells were related to natural gas leaks. People who don't use
BME in the hood to control fugitive odors risk having their (and others') work interrupted for significant amounts of time while the fire department investigates these calls.
This is a case when looking at the properties of a chemical in isolation leads to missing key aspects of the situation.
- 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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