An absorbing occupation

The adhesives, chemicals and solvents you use may also be "sticking" to you. Here's what to look for and how to avoid it.

by Dan Anderson

We’re all adults, so let’s be blunt: If you spill paint thinner, cleaning solvents or some other type of “methyl-ethyl-ugly” solvent on your hands, then go to the bathroom without cleaning your hands before touching your genitals, it approximates the effect of injecting the chemical directly into the bloodstream.

That eye-opening tidbit is from a report by the Florida Cooperative Extension Service (FCSE). Using the skin of the forearm as a standard, the FCSE report indicates that absorption in the groin area can be more than 11 times faster than skin of the forearm.

Protect yourself from PPE
Here’s another thought: Let’s say you’re working with someproduct that’s an alphabet soup of chemicals you can’t pronounce. You check the label and Material Safety Data Sheet and it recommends you use rubber gloves, safety glasses and a rubber apron. You wear the gear, but during clean up, some of the product slops onto your leather work boots.

The leather absorbs the chemical and holds it against your sweat-soaked socks for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, possibly for as long as you own those boots. Combine the thin skin on your foot with the constant moisture of per­spiration, and you’ve created a pair of steel-toed chemical-delivery systems.

Even rubber gloves can expose you to chemical hazards if misused. For comfort, many rubber gloves have a cloth or fiber lining. Over time, chemicals can be absorbed on to that lining as you put on or take off the gloves, by tiny cracks or holes in the rubber cover, or by storing the gloves alongside chemicals.

Contaminated glove linings, held tightly against the moist, thin skin between your fingers, actually increases the absorption of chemicals the gloves are supposed to protect against.

Watch the wash
The risks from jobsite chemicals can also follow you home. What happens if you toss chemical-stained work clothes into the washing machine with your family’s clothes?

Laundry soap does a good job dissolving chemicals out of cotton work pants, but the artificial fibers in your baby daughter’s jammies or your wife’s undies absorb petroleum-based chemicals like a sponge.

The chemicals will be diluted enough so they won’t cause instant illness, but there have been cases where family members developed health problems due to “transferred exposure” of chemicals during laundering.

The consequences of contamination
There are as many ailments and disorders related to chemical exposure as there are modes of contamination. Skin disorders, kidney problems, liver problems and injury to the nervous system are just a few of the possible consequences of chemical exposure.

“The big problem is that if a chemical doesn’t make a person sick or cause obvious damage right away, they tend not to worry about it,” says Ralph Riley, Safety Director, Associated Builders and Contractors, “Chronic exposure can be just as injurious as acute exposure.”

The danger of chronic, long-term exposure to hazardous chemicals on jobsites is underlined by findings from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics which indicates that occupational skin diseases, mostly in the form of allergic and irritant (contact) dermatitis, are the second most-common type of occupational disease in construction.

It’s not just the nasty, scary-sounding solvents and chemicals that can affect construction workers. Plain, old wet mortar and concrete can cause disabling skin problems for workers.

A report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) cites studies that indicate up to 71 percent of apprentice cement masons had one or more skin problems. That report indicated concrete workers lost work days from skin problems at seven times the national average.

Concrete and mortar can cause nasty injuries. The high-pH, alkali chemicals present in concrete can literally burn flesh if it gets into an open flesh wound.

The pH of wet concrete is between 11 to 14. If you remember any chemistry from your school days, this is one billion times that of bare skin (which has a pH of 4.5) because pH is measured on a logarithmic scale. Just as battery acid burns because it has a very low pH, the alkali of wet concrete can burn skin because of its high pH.

All workers at risk
None of the building trades are exempt to the risks from chemicals present on modern jobsites. Carpenters long considered themselves immune to chemical hazards, once they broke themselves of the habit of holding chemically-treated nails in their mouths. The advent of pressure-treated lumber has voided that immunity to some degree.

The most common preservatives used to pressure-treat wood are copper, chromium and arsenic metal salts. All of these chemicals can cause skin irritation and in high concentrations, can be absorbed and damage internal organs. While the residual levels of these chemicals in pressure-treated wood are low, contact with treated lumber on a daily basis may cause irritation.

A government study in the early 1990s found over half the carpenters on a large construction site reported skin problems and those working exclusively with pressure-treated lumber had dematitis more often than those working only with untreated lumber.

NIOSH reports indicate those whitish deposits on the surface of treated lumber may contain measurable amounts of preservative chemicals.

Consider that the next time you use the restroom after a day at the jobsite, or while building a deck at home.

Published in the May/June 2001 issue of Contractor Tools and Supplies magazine.

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