Evaluation of the Safety Precaution to Occupational Exposure to Antineoplastic Drugs in the Department of Pharmacy

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the safety precautions for occupational exposure to antineoplastic drugs in the hospital work environment following the investigation in December 2008.In order to evaluate the revised antineoplastic drug mixing manual of the Department of Pharmacy in April 2009, air samples, wipe samples of the equipment of the preparation room and the Department of Pharmacy, and urine samples of pharmacists were collected before and after improvement measures. Cyclophosphamide (CPA), fluorouracil (5FU), gemcitabine (GEM) and platinum-containing drugs (Pt) in the air and wipe samples were measured to evaluate the occupational contamination level of antineoplastic drugs. CPA and Pt in the urine samples were measured to evaluate the occupational exposure level. We used a checklist in order to score the safety measures.After the manual for antineoplastic drug mixing of our Pharmacy was revised, the compliancy for the check lists was highly improved, which lead to decreased contamination levels of CPA, GEM and Pt in the preparation room except for some parts. As CPA and Pt were not detected in the pharmacists' urine samples, we concluded that the safety precautions implemented here until then had been effective in improving the workplace environment contamination of antineoplastic drugs.In the meantime, most probably because we began mixing 5FU prescriptions on holidays from December 2010, we detected workplace environment contamination by 5FU in some spots. We aim to tackle this issue next.