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). Thegeometric mean formaldehyde concentration was 20-93 ppb in the anatomy laboratory before startingthe anatomy dissecting. After beginning the dissecting, the highest geometric mean concentrationswere 1011-1380 ppb, for more than WHO guidline. It means we should reduce formaldehyde exposurewhen medical students and lecturers are exposed during gross anatomy dissection courses. Then weimproved the ventilation by a local ventilation system using the existing ventilation assigned to thelaboratory and develop local ventilation apparatus for each dissection table. After these improvements,the geometric mean concentrations could be kept about 100 ppb. Significant decreases were alsoobserved during the exposed period for symptoms of "unusual thirst", "burning eyes", "itchy eyes", "badfeeling", "fatigue", etc. in comparison with symptoms before improvement of the ventilation system.