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NEWS & INFORMATION |
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Source To Surgery - February 1995, Vol. 3 Issue I
Recent studies have demonstrated that glove powder, cornstarch used as a
donning agent, is not an allergen per se, but is probably an
environmental contaminant which through adsorption of Mutable latex
protein carries these allergens through the medical environment.
With the use of large area sampler of Air SentinelTM devise
developed by Mark Swanson of Mayo, Dr. Yunginger and colleagues sampled
and collected airborne particles in various areas of the operating room
and hospital environments. These samplers were programmed to
periodically sample air in various geographic work areas of the medical
center which had in common a high usage of powdered gloves. The presence
of latex was later confirmed by inhibition immunoassays.
Geographic work areas where powdered gloves were used in
ug/m3 of aeroallergen:
Geographic work areas with low usage of powdered latex gloves or high usage of synthetic gloves:
Through the utilization of a personal breathing zone sampler worn by medical personnel throughout the workday, environmental samples were taken. Tagged workers wore these to gain the following average values over an 8-hour workday.
Sampling of the Surgical Suites utilizing personal breathing zone samples were placed in two locations - one on the anesthetists' end of the table and another on the head of the OR table to simulate exposure experienced by the surgical patient.
These measurements describe a wide variety of exposure up to a 4-fold difference at different parts in the same room where the anesthetists receive greater exposure than the patient. Even the special orthopedic surgical suite with 225 changes of air/hour was insufficient to wash out or dilute the aeroallergens from the air. Editor's Note: These studies led to the conclusion that if powdered glove use is to be continued only gloves which measure low in allergen content should be used. The complete study published in Journal of Allergy Clinical Immunology Sept. 94 might be useful to readers wishing more details.
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