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From: Jack Reidy <jreidy2**At_Symbol_Here**STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Face masks and solvents
Date: Jun 26, 2020 15:54 UTC
Reply-To:
ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
In-Reply-To: Re: [DCHAS-L] Face masks and solvents
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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