Exposure profiles of workers from indium tin oxide target manufacturing and recycling factories in Taiwan.

Exposure profiles of workers from indium tin oxide target manufacturing and recycling factories in Taiwan. Int J Hyg Environ Health. 2021 Feb 12;233:113708 Authors: Hsu YT, Su TY, Chen CY, Liao HY, Kuo YC, Wu WT, Li LA, Lai CH, Liou SH Abstract Indium tin oxide exposure poses a potential health risk, but the exposure assessment in occupational setting remains incomplete and continues to be a significant challenge. To this end, we investigated the association of work type, airborne indium concentration, respirable fraction of total indium, and cumulative indium exposure index (CEI) with the levels of plasma indium (P-In) and urinary indium (U-In) among 302 indium tin oxide target manufacturing and recycling workers in Taiwan. We observed that recycling-crushing produced the highest concentrations of total indium (area: 2084.8 μg/m3; personal: 3494.5 μg/m3) and respirable indium (area: 533.4 μg/m3; personal: 742.0 μg/m3). Powdering produced the highest respirable fraction of total indium (area: 58.6%; personal: 81.5%), where the workers had the highest levels of P-In (geometric mean: 2.0 μg/L) and U-In (1.0 μg/g creatinine). After adjusting for the confounder, the CEIs of powdering (βPR = 0.78; βPR = 0.44), bonding (βPT = 0.61; βPT = 0.37), and processing workers (βPT = 0.43; βPT = 0.28) showed significant associations with P-In and U-In, validating its utility in monitoring the exposure. Also, the respira...
Source: International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental health - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Int J Hyg Environ Health Source Type: research