In the event of a chemical spill or accident, emergency response personnel can be at risk of getting toxic substances on their skin. To guide the management and treatment protocols for chemical events involving skin exposures, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has developed a dermal toolkit to assist employee health professionals and first responders.
The toolkit is available online at http://bit.ly/2rjs5Hu. The new resource provides an important adjunct to the numerous materials available for managing chemical inhalational exposures. The skin can serve as the critical exposure pathway for chemicals to enter the bloodstream.
The DERMaL eToolkit is organized by incident phase, information categories, and resource types. According to NIOSH, the idea is to provide quickly accessible information on chemical health effects, exposure assessments, control measures, and medical management.
“Predefined searches are accessible on the main page for each phase of the response,” a NIOSH official explained in a blog post.1 “For the response phase, ‘hot buttons’ are included for PPE, DECON, and health information, because these terms were determined to be the most likely to be used during the response phase. Other tools on the homepage that could be utilized include a dermal checklist for assessing risks during response activities.”
The kit was developed by NIOSH as a companion to Chemical Hazards Emergency Medical Management (CHEMM) website (http://bit.ly/2qIzf5p).
REFERENCE
- Hudson N. DERMal eTookit. NIOSH Science Blog May 24, 2017: http://bit.ly/2rFSSz5.
To guide the management and treatment protocols for chemical events involving skin exposures, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has developed a dermal toolkit to assist employee health professionals and first responders.
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