Dermal Absorption of Comp B and CRB-12 in Isolated Rat Skin

摘要

Potential health hazards of new Army weapon systems are of concern to health and safety professionals, the general public, and weapon system developers. One concern is the potential for dermal absorption from materials and chemicals. High explosives, such as CBR-12, which is intended for sue in the 60mm M720El and M768 mortar shells, may be modified so that they will be less likely to explode from the unplanned stimuli. The purpose of this effort was to estimate the impact of such a modification on dermal absorption. We investigated the penetration of powdered explosives through dermatomed rat skin in static diffusion cells for up to six hours. We compared 'Composition B' with a replacement explosive, CBR.12. We detected penetration of very small amounts of one of the components of each explosive. Steady state flux of trinitrotoluene from 'Composition B' was 1.14 ug/cm2/hr and steady state flux of dinitroanisole from CBR-12 was 0.74 ug/cm2/hr. These rates of penetration are not expected to be hazardous.