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Occupational exposure of midwives to nitrous oxide on delivery suites
Identifier
027605
Type of Spiritual Experience
None
Background
And what about the mother and baby?
A description of the experience
Occup Environ Med. 2003 Dec; 60(12): 958–961.
doi: [10.1136/oem.60.12.958]
PMCID: PMC1740444
PMID: 14634189
Occupational exposure of midwives to nitrous oxide on delivery suites
K Henderson, I Matthews, A Adisesh, and A Hutchings
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Abstract
Aims: To compare environmental and biological monitoring of midwives for nitrous oxide in a delivery suite environment.
Methods: Environmental samples were taken over a period of four hours using passive diffusion tubes. Urine measurements were taken at the start of the shift and after four hours.
Results: Environmental levels exceeded the legal occupational exposure standards for nitrous oxide (100 ppm over an 8 hour time weighted average) in 35 of 46 midwife shifts monitored. There was a high correlation between personal environmental concentrations and biological uptake of nitrous oxide for those midwives with no body burden of nitrous oxide at the start of a shift, but not for others.
Conclusions: Greater engineering control measures are needed to reduce daily exposure to midwives to below the occupational exposure standard. Further investigation of the toxicokinetics of nitrous oxide is needed.
The source of the experience
PubMedConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Symbols
Science Items
Nitrous OxideActivities and commonsteps
Commonsteps
References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
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