IRSST - Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail

Studying the environmental and physiological factors contributing to biological variability: impact of workload on biological exposure indicators

Abstract

A research program undertaken by the IRSST a few years ago showed that workload can have a major impact on the value of the biological exposure indicators (BEI) for various solvents. During a subsequent step, the researchers were able to better characterize this impact. Using volunteers, they studied in the laboratory the variations in the BEIs induced by different workloads for five industrial solvents and under exposure conditions similar to those prevailing in an industrial environment. For four of the five solvents studied (toluene, styrene, trichloroethylene and acetone), an increase in workload produced an increase in the biological exposure indicators, in contrast to n-hexane, whose BEIs remained stable. Physiologically-based toxicokinetic (PBTK) modeling, developed for each of the solvents, corroborates these results.
Designers of PBTK models now have equations resulting from probative physiological data that they can use to integrate variability in the workload into their model.

Additional Information

Type: Project
Number: 0099-1700
Status: Completed
Year of completion: 2008
Team:
  • Ginette Truchon (IRSST)
  • Robert Tardif (Université de Montréal)
  • Phillip Gardiner (Université de Montréal)
  • Martin Brochu (Université de Montréal)