HEALTH AND OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE TO ANTI-CANCER DRUGS

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The objectives of this study are to determine whether handling anti- neoplastic drugs or caring for patients receiving treatment with these drugs presents a risk to the health of staff, and to evaluate the relationship between work practices and various measures of exposure to these drugs. The specific aims are (1) to investigate whether specific work practices are associated with reproductive effects on health among nurses, pharmacists and nurses' aides, (2) to evaluate the relationship between work practices and exposure to antineoplastic drugs as measured by an industrial hygiene test and a urine mutagen test and (3) to investigate relationships among internal and external exposure measures and results on clinical laboratory tests which may reflect effects of exposure. The study is a competing continuation involving further data analysis of an existing dataset. Subjects are exposed nurses and pharmacists who handle antineoplastics, and nurses, aides caring for patients on treatment protocols at participating member facilities of the NSABP project of the NCI, including private physician's offices involved in NSABP clinical trials. Controls are unexposed pharmacists, nurses, and aides from these same facilities. Data was gathered in two phases: Phase I was a survey using a self-completion questionnaire covering demographic and control variables, exposure. history, and a health and reproductive history. Phase II collected, from a subsample of subjects in Phase I, updated exposure and health histories, data on other chemical exposures which could affect urine mutagenesis, an industrial hygiene measure of adriamycin exposure; blood and urine samples for clinical laboratory tests and urine mutagenesis, and an exposure log.