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The source of many workplace injuries is something most nurses aren't aware can harm them — common sterilizing and disinfecting chemicals used in hospitals

During her 30 years in a hospital, Nancy Mucciaccio, RN, rarely had a sick day. Besides working in an ambulatory surgery unit, she regularly traveled in Asia and Africa as a volunteer. She even hiked in the Andes. Then in 1997, her active work and lifestyle crashed to a halt, brought down by debilitating occupational asthma and nerve damage in her right arm and leg.

The source of her injuries, she said, is something most nurses aren't aware can harm them-common sterilizing and disinfecting chemicals used in hospitals.

"Every time I walked by a cleaning cart, I would have chest tightness and start wheezing," she said. "I didn't connect the dots until I got very ill." Mucciaccio was out of work for 10 months collecting workers compensation benefits until, diagnosed with occupational asthma, she finally had to leave her job.

"I was so overwhelmed," she said. "It was really frightening to me. I'm a single person. I worked in hospitals all my life. All of a sudden my life was taking a [180]-degree turn."

She has become so sensitized to respiratory irritants she feels like Howard Hughes, the reclusive millionaire with a legendary fear of germs. Mucciaccio leaves for work extra early in the morning to avoid crowds of commuters. She can't visit a house with candles or a fireplace burning and, in the spring when pollen explodes, she hides indoors as much as possible.

Now working as an occupational health nurse, Mucciaccio rates the potential hazards of cleaning chemicals as just as serious a problem for nurses as latex allergies. Yet many nurses, she said, are only starting to wake up to the possibility that chemicals at work could be triggering their coughs, headaches, dizziness and other discomforts.

Chemical hazards

In the 2001 American Nurses Association's Health & Safety Survey, only 6.7 percent of the more than 4,000 respondents identified chemical exposure as one of their top health concerns.

That's not surprising. Nurses may be aware of the hazards of potent chemotherapy drugs, and latex and mercury contamination and know how to deal with them, but people don't think about cleaning products harming them, said Laura Brannen, co-director of Hospitals for a Healthy Environment.

Yet the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health classifies many of the sterilizing and disinfecting products used in health care institutions as hazardous chemicals. Ethylene oxide and glutaraldehyde used in instrument sterilization; quarternary ammonium compounds and benzalkonium chloride found in floor and surface cleaning products; and ethanolamine, petroleum distillates and lye found in floor strippers and buffing compounds are among the chemicals nurses say can turn the work shift into a wheezing, coughing, painful experience.

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