EVALUATION OF FORMALDEHYDE EXPOSURE DURING A GROSS ANATOMY DISSECTION COURSE

Formaldehyde has been widely used as a disinfectant and preservative in medical fields. Medicalstudents during their dissection course are exposed to formaldehyde, whose exposure is recentlyconsidered to be one of the causes of multiple chemical sensitivity. At first, we evaluated formaldehydeexposures that occurred in the gross anatomy laboratory with a general ventilation system.Formaldehyde in air was sampled by an active 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH)-silica gel cartridge,extracted with acetonitrile and analyzed with a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).