Chemical exposures on the job may be linked to diseases in nurses
A first ever national survey of nurses’ exposures
to chemicals, pharmaceuticals and
radiation on the job suggests there are links
between serious health problems such as
cancer, asthma, miscarriages and children’s
birth defects and the duration and intensity
of these exposures.
The survey included 1,500
nurses from all 50 states.
The survey was conducted by the Washington-
based nonprofit Environmental Working
Group and are available online at, www.ewg.
org/reports/nursesurvey.
Every day, nurses confront low-level but
repeated exposures to mixtures of hazardous
materials that include residues from
medications, anesthetic gases, sterilizing
and disinfecting chemicals, radiation, latex,
cleaning chemicals, hand and skin disinfection
products, and even mercury escaping
from broken medical equipment. There are
no workplace safety standards to protect nurses
from the combined effects of these exposures
on their health. “Nurses are exposed daily to scores of different
toxic chemicals and other hazardous
materials whose cumulative health risks have
never been studied,” said Jane Houlihan, Vice
President for Research at Environmental Working
Group. “Nurses ingest, touch or breathe
residues of any number of these potentially
harmful substances as they care for patients,
day after day and face potential but unstudied
health problems as a result.”
According to the survey results, nurses who
were exposed regularly - at least once a week
- to the chemicals had increased rates of cancer,
asthma and miscarriages. Nurses who were
pregnant when they were exposed to certain
chemicals were more likely to have children
with birth defects than nurses not exposed to
the chemicals. Chemical exposure seemed to have an especially
large impact on the rate of musculoskeletal
defects in children of pregnant nurses. Nurses
with frequent exposure to sterilizing agents and
anesthetic gases were seven to nine times more
likely to have children with musculoskeletal
defects than their unexposed peers. The Centers for Disease Control proposed
a National Occupational Exposure Survey for
the health care industry in 2002.
To date, no such survey has been initiated
to better understand the range of potentially
hazardous chemical exposure in the health care
industry and related illnesses.
“For many of the toxic chemicals in hospitals
there are safer alternative or safer processes. We
must make these healthier choices for the sake
of our patients, nurses and all hospital employees,”
said Barbara Sattler, RN, DrPH, FAAN,
professor and director of the Environmental
Health Education Center at the University of
Maryland School of Nursing.
“MNA has worked for the last 10
years to teach frontline nurses about the
hazards they are exposed to at work and
how personal protective equipment and safe
work practices will reduce these exposures.
On the MNA Health and Safety page, you can learn
more about many of the healthcare workplace
exposures,” said Evie Bain, associate director
in the MNA’s Division of Occupational Health
and Safety “MNA activism, legislation and
labor/management actions have often reduced
or eliminated exposures to substances such
as natural rubber latex, glutaraldehyde, needlestick
injuries and mercury. OSHA and NIOSH
also provide information on safe work practices
to protect the health of all nurses, their unborn
children as well as their patients. These materials
are available at the Web sites www.dol.
gov/OSHA and www.cdc.gov/NIOSH.”
Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit
research organization based in Washington,
D.C., that uses the power of information to
protect human health and the environment.
The survey was co-sponsored by the nonprofit
group Health Care Without Harm, the University
of Maryland’s Environmental Health
Education Center and the American Nurses
Association. The MNA consulted on the wording
of the questionnaire.
