NIOSH has just recently added 34 drugs to its list of drugs that have the potential to be hazardous to an estimated 8 million U.S. health care workers.  The list can be accessed from here.

This list categorizes drugs into these groups: 1) antineoplastic drugs 2) non-antineoplastic hazardous drugs, and 3) drugs with reproductive effects.  And it includes 34 drugs not found on previous lists, five of which include the manufacturer’s safe handling warnings; general guidance on engineering controls and personal protective equipment for various activities that may be encountered in health care settings have been updated.   A drug’s toxicity, how the drug can enter the body, how the drug is handled and what exposure controls are used determine the drug’s risk to health care workers, NIOSH stated.

The NIOSH List of Antineoplastic and Other Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings, 2016 also updates guidance on engineering controls and personal protective equipment for health care settings. The document offers instructions on how to create a workplace-specific list of hazardous drugs, as well as guidance for assessing a drug’s hazardousness.

“Hazardous drugs include those used for cancer chemotherapy, antiviral drugs, hormones, some bioengineered drugs, and other examples of hazardous drugs,” NIOSH Director John Howard said in a press release. “The NIOSH 2016 Hazardous Drug List is an important resource as well as a tool to raise awareness among workers about the hazards [of] some drugs, enabling workers to take the necessary steps to protect themselves from exposure while doing their job.”

The new document, “NIOSH List of Antineoplastic and Other Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings, 2016,” is the latest version of a list first published by NIOSH in 2004 as an appendix to an Alert about antineoplastic and other hazardous drugs used in health care settings.

Oct 2016 by Stephen Burt, BS, MFA