Isoflurane is a halogenated anesthetic agent commonly used in the lab environment for animal research. Inhalant anesthesia is quick, cost effective and can be maintained for long periods of time. However, until recently the scavenging of the waste gas has not been done very effectively.
Reliable, Safe, Accurate
CDC Workplace Safety and Health
- Increase awareness about the adverse health effects of waste anesthetic gases
- Describe how workers are exposed to waste anesthetic gases
- Recommend work practices to reduce these exposures
- Identify methods to minimize leakage of anesthetic gases into the work environment
United States DEPARTMENT OF LABOR/Occupational Safety and Health Administration
The Occupational Safety and Health Act requires employers to comply with hazard-specific safety and health standards. In addition, employers must provide their employees with a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm under Section 5(a)(1), the General Duty Clause of the Act. Employers can be cited for violating the General Duty Clause if there is a recognized hazard and they do not take steps to prevent or abate the hazard.
Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety
Easy-to-read, question-and-answer fact sheets covering a wide range of workplace health and safety topics, from hazards to diseases specific to waste gas
US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health
Anesthesia Machine: Checklist, Hazards, Scavenging
Study.com: Online micro courses make workforce development easy
Anesthetic Hazards and Precautions in a Veterinary Practice. Contains informational video on topic
Springer/ Canadian Journal of Anesthesia
Providing researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols and reference works.
The anesthesia delivery system comprises the anesthesia machine, vaporizers, ventilator, and waste gas scavenging system. Failure of the delivery system is a rare cause of anesthesia-related injury to, or death of, a patient. More commonly the delivery system is misused, the anesthesia caregiver makes an error, or the delivery system fails while the user is unaware that a failure has occurred. This site will review failures and complications of delivery systems from the viewpoint of how they may be detected and thereby harm to the patient prevented
