Biological monitoring and health effect assessment of arsenic exposure for workers in electro-optics and semiconductor high-tech industries

摘要

Arsenic compounds have been played an important role in electro-optics and semiconductor industries. However, the arsenic is harmful to the workers, particularly for the equipment maintenance and clean workers. The objectives of the study are to evaluate the personal exposure of arsenic by biomonitoring the total arsenic concentrations (tAs) in blood, and to do the health effect assessment by subjective syndromes, blood biochemistry, DNA methylation and urinary 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) concentrations for these workers. The study subjects were 133, including exposure group 74 and control group 59 . The results indicated that abnormal % of SGPT and SGOT were higher in exposure subjects than those in control subjects (P＜0.05). Regarding the tAs in blood, the concentrations were 10.96±3.73 μg/L in exposure group and 11.09+2.58 μg/L in control group ; The tAs of blood in semiconductor industry subjects (11.93±2.32 μg/L) were significantly higher than those in electro-optics industry subjects (10.41±3.64 μg/L) (p＜0.01), and the tAs of blood in maintenance and clean workers (11.63±4.42 μg/L) were higher than those in control workers (10.03±2.23 μg/L) (p＜0.05). The tAs of blood were significantly correlated with the consumption of seafoods. The 8-OHdG level in semiconductor industry subjects (4.44±2.98 μg/g crn) were higher than those in electro-optics industry subjects (3.39±2.57 μg/g crn). Regarding to the DNA methylation, there is no significantly different between exposure group and control group in pl6 gene or p53 gene, individually. The study concluded that source of the worker's blood arsenic concentration was from seafood intake rather than worker's occupational exposure.