The purposes of this study were to provide the data for composition of ethylene glycol ethers and 2-ethoxyethyl acetate(EEA) exposure assessment of workers in various industrial operations.
In this study, 80 thinners were analyzed to identify their composition and the air concentration of 2-ethoxyethyl acetate(EEA) and urinary 2-ethoxyacetic acid(EAA) were measured.
In this study the subjects were the total of 183 drawn from 98 workers who were occupationally exposed to EEA and 85 workers who were not.
The results were as follows:
1. There were found average 4.2 components in each thinner.
2. There were 90 components(26.9%) in ethylene glycol ethers of total of 334 detected organic solvents
3. Ethoxyethyl acetate, ethoxyethanol, buthoxyethanol, methoxy-ethanol were found in 30(37.5%), 27(33.8%), 19(23.8%), 2thinners(2.5%), respectively and their contents were average 18.5%.
4. Benzene was found 8 thinners(10.0%) of the total 80 surveyed.
5. In the electronic painting workers EEA exposure concentration was the highest, as showed 2.88ppm(0.01∼15.1ppm), cases of exceeded threshold limit value(TLV=5ppm) were 7(10.6%) workers among the total of 98 exposed workers.
6. The geometric mean of urinary EEA in exposed workers was 1.61 ㎎/gcreatinine, and was higher than that of workers who were not exposed.
In the electronic painting workers and offset printers, the geometric mean of urinary EAA was the highest showing 2.8 ㎎/gcreatinine.
7. The correlation coefficient between urinary concentration of EAA and air concentration of EEA was 0.90(P$lt;0.05).
The present results suggest that composition of ethylene glycol ethers in thinners must be evaluated when industrial hygiene surveys and biological monitoring are performed.
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