THINK about it… when we suit up in our chemical PPE, unless we are in a LEVEL A suit, often times the one organ that is NOT protected is our inner ear. Think about when workers are doing their routine tasks and wearing their chemical PPE to protect themselves; often times the ears are left exposed to the chemicals. In the first phase of the project, dealing with the ototoxicity of chemicals (Report R-604),5 we evaluated the effects of chemicals alone on hearing. From a review of human and animal studies, we concluded that ethylbenzene, styrene, toluene, trichloroethylene and lead are ototoxic, and that carbon disulfide, n-hexane and xylene are possibly ototoxic at conceivable concentrations in the workplace (see Table 1). CLICK HERE (pdf) for the report.
