Abstract

• The purpose of this study was to call attention to the mental, physical and occupational hazards of the anticancer-drug-handling nurses by examining the possible urinary mutagenicity and measuring physical symptoms and stress level of the nurses exposed to anticancer drugs. The experimental group of the urinary mutagenicity assay was 14 nurses handling anticancer drugs at the medical wards of a hospital located in J city; the control group was 12 psychiatric nurses of the same hospital. The test material was the nurses' 24hrs urine, which was concentrated by XAD-2 column chromatography. Tester strains were TA98( +/- S9 mix), TA100( +/- S9 mix), TA1535( +/- S9 mix) and TA1537( +/- S9 mix); Salmonella mammalian-microsomal test (Ames test) was employed for the urinary mutagenicity assay. The physical symptoms of which the nurses experienced were investigated through self-reports on open-questionnaires. The stress levels of the experimental group were measured by a stress measuring instrument developed by this author. Reliability of this instrument was found to be adequate (Cronbach's Alpha=0.9079). To ascertain the urinary mutagenicity of the experimental group, the mean and the standard deviation of the colonies of Tester strains appearing on the minimal plates were taken and compared differences between two groups. T-test was employed for the significance test of two groups. The physical symptoms were compared between the two groups through the analysis of the nurse' self-reports. The mean and standard deviation of the stress levels of the experimental group were also calculated and were examined through t-test. The results were summarized as follows: 1. The experimental group revealed significantly higher urinary mutagenicity both in the activation method test and the non-activation method test of the tester strains TA98, TA100 and TA1535. In the case of TA1537, two groups showed no difference in the non-activation method test, but the activation method revealed difference. 2. The physical symptoms were also much more frequently reported in the experimental group. 79. 3% of the experimental group reported more than 1 kind of physical symptoms. On the other hand, 33.2% of the control group complained of 1 kind of physical symptom. The items with high symptom frequency were 'headache', 'itching sensation', 'corneal congestion', 'skin allergy'. 3. The mean score of stress in the experimental group was 2.41(range 1-4). The experimental group showed the stress level above 2.0 in the 14 of 15 items in all. The highest stress level were recorded in the following items in the order quoted, 'I fear that anticancer drug may touch any part of body while handling it.', 'I feel concerned there is no protective countermeasure against anticancer drug handling.', 'I am afraid the anticancer drug handling may produce a fetal loss in the future'.
• Keywords: Mutagenicity; Physical symptoms; Stress

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