Investigation of the Dust Behavior of Surrogates for Consideration in the Practice of Occupational Hygiene

Abstract

In the pharmaceutical industry, the protection of employees has a top priority. Active substances with toxic effects at very low doses are challenges regarding health protection. In this context, occupational hygienists conduct air measurements with so-called surrogates to quantify operator exposures. Surrogates are substitutes for more hazardous substances that pose no or only minor health risks. Surrogates are intended to create realistic worst case scenarios during measurement and should therefore be “dusty”. In this study, 30 different samples of surrogates were examined with the DustView 2 measurement device to determine their relative dustiness. The tests demonstrated that the DustView 2 is suitable for evaluating and classifying different dust behaviors by means of “dustiness numbers”. It was concluded that Naproxen sodium, being particularly “dusty”, is best suited as a surrogate among those tested. In addition, other physical parameters such as particle size distribution, flow properties, (bulk) density and moisture content were examined. It could be determined that there are no linear relationships between the sample materials and the generated parameters. Nevertheless, possible relationships between high dustiness numbers and low particle densities, high ffc values and particle size distributions of x50,2 < 10 μm were identified. To confirm the physical influences on dustiness numbers, further measurements should be conducted with additional surrogate materials and the generation of additional measurement data. For the time being and in the absence of surrogate-specific information, it should be assumed as a rule of thumb that milling and especially micronization renders most surrogates less dusty