Government
HEW to set laboratory safety standards eating or drinking in labs as well as applying cosmetics, oddly enough. Predictably, all experiments using carcinogenic substances will have to be conducted in ventilated fume hoods or glove boxes. Laminarflowsafety cabinets, the HEW panel concludes, will be satisfactory for tissue culture and biological experiments using small quantities of chemical carcinogens. Exhaust air from hoods and other containment equipment According to the preface to HEW's prowill have to be treated before it is released posed guidelines for laboratories using outdoors. In the case of OSH A-regulated chemical carcinogens, "The Department compounds, HEW says that treatment of Health, Education & Welfare has a rewill have to result in a concentration of sponsibility to its employees as well as to the carcinogen not exceeding the OSHA the general scientific community to protime-weighted average for the compound. vide the leadership for developing releFor level "C" controls no exhaust disvant safeguards to protect laboratory charge of carcinogens will be permitted. workers and their environment from exTreatment of exhaust air will have to be posure to biological, chemical, and physaccomplished by filtration, reaction, abical carcinogenic agents." sorption, adsorption, incineration, or Having thus granted itself the mandate, dilution. Even vacuum lines will have to a panel of HEW scientists are set to probe fitted with special filters and traps to mulgate detailed standards, work pracprevent carcinogens from contaminating tices, and engineering controls for all the vacuum system. federal labs under the agency's scrutiny, The guidelines also call for a list of anincluding the National Institutes of cillary activities that will be required, Health, the National Cancer Institute, primarily medical examinations. First, lab and the Food & Drug Administration. But workers will have to take a "preassignthe implications of the action are broader ment" physical examination so that any than those just for federal laboratories. existing medical problems can be identiAlthough still uncertain, the guidelines fied. Subsequently, lab workers will have may be applied either by HEW fiat or by to undergo periodic medical checkups, moral suasion to HEW grantees, particand records of the workers' exposure to ularly NIH grant recipients. carcinogens will be kept. A lab worker's At the same time, private industrial medical records, HEW says, may have to labs may feel compelled to adopt the be kept on file by a company for as long as rules. "We're very much concerned," ob40 years. serves Dr. W. Emmett Barkely of NCI, To a certain extent, the HEW guide"that many labs are developing their own lines embrace many of the concepts and rules that OSHA already has put forth to regulate worker safety in industry. In some cases, such as the flow rates for laboratory hoods, the guidelines are not so stringent. In other cases the HEW rules call for more attention to detail. But the guidelines, like the OSHA regulations that preceded them, are nonetheless the target of critics who claim that they go too far, and in certain instances may infringe on the freedom of scientific inquiry. The OSHA list of carcinogenic substances, for example, has been ridiculed as simplistic by some chemists because it contains chemicals such as ethanol and common inorganic iron salts. As Philip H. Abelson, editor of Science, told a public meeting on the guidelines held at NIH late last month, "Inorganic salts are not going to jump out of the bottle and bite somebody. You [HEW] are lowering yourselves to the intellectual level of OSHA and ought to be Proposed safety rules will give detailed procedures for handling carcinogens ashamed of yourselves." D
New safety rules for labs under agency control will be designed to shield workers from exposure to all types of carcinogenic agents
plans. NIH would like to provide guidance to them." The HEW guidelines will apply to chemical carcinogens regulated by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration and to a list of chemicals judged by HEW scientists to be a carcinogenic risk to lab workers. The HEW group, headed by Dr. David P. Rail, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, is working up a series of carcinogen safety monographs to be used along with the guidelines. The monographs will cover groups of chemicals such as polycyclic aromatics, nitrosamines, nitrosamides, aryl and alkyl halides, and aromatic amines. The monographs will provide specific safety and technical information for lab personnel. In addition to the monographs, HEW has proposed a hierarchical system of work practices and engineering controls for dealing with carcinogens in federal labs. The so-called level "A" controls apply to those compounds for which OSHA has established an exposure limit of 1 ppm or greater. Similarly, "B" level controls apply to chemicals with OSHA limits of less than 1 ppm, and "C" level lab controls to chemical carcinogens for which OSHA has prohibited occupational exposure completely. The HEW guidelines do not replace OSHA regulations governing federal laboratories, however. The guidelines spell out in excruciating detail protective measures that lab workers should employ when working with carcinogenic compounds. For example, mechanical pipeting is required for all three levels of control; oral pipeting, naturally, is out. Prohibited, too, is any
Oct. 9, 1978C&EN
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