Protect friends, family from take-home exposure
Workers can carry hazardous substances home from work on their clothes, bodies, tools and other items. When they do, they can unknowingly expose their families to these substances, sometimes causing illness and injury.
Some of the most common take-home toxins include lead, pesticides, beryllium and asbestos. Families of industrial workers can also be exposed to more hazardous VOCs like benzene, toluene, butadiene and others that are easy to carry home without taking the proper precautions.
Take-home exposures can be particularly dangerous to young children because they are small, spend lots of time on the floor, tend to put things in their mouths, and have bodies that are still growing and developing. Even trace amounts of hazardous substances can have lifelong effects on children, potentially affecting their growth and development. For instance, lead harms children's brains and can be harmful to pregnant women and their unborn children.
Some chemicals are harmful to both children and adults, but many chemicals have not been tested for safety in children. For anyone who works with chemicals -- even chemicals that are deemed nonhazardous to workers -- the safest thing to do is make sure not to take them home accidentally, according to the CDC.
The CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has published a study of contamination of workers' homes by hazardous substances transported from the workplace. The study documents cases of home contamination from 28 countries and 36 states in the U.S. The reported cases cover a wide variety of materials, industries and occupations.
According to the NIOSH study, the most common means by which hazardous substances are taken home by workers to their families include:
- Work clothing: In addition to discovering hazardous chemicals in the home, the study notes washing machines and dryers sometimes contain dangerous levels of the chemicals, poisoning those who launder work clothes and contaminating other laundry.
- Tools and equipment: Substances can contaminate hand tools and other equipment, which are then transferred into vehicles and homes.
- Taking miscellaneous items home from work: Items such as bags, rags, metal drums and scrap lumber have caused serious and fatal poisonings of family members.
- On the worker's body: Reports document cases where workers passed dangerous materials to their family members through their hands.
The best way to keep hazardous chemicals and materials out of your home is to prevent them from leaving work with you:
- Wear PPE and protective clothing at work so chemicals do not get on your clothes.
- Change your clothes and shoes before leaving work.
- Keep dirty work clothes and shoes separate from your clean clothes (e.g., store in separate lockers). Additionally, do not wash or dry work clothes and nonwork clothes together.
- Wash off any noticeable contaminants. If your workplace has a shower, rinse before leaving work. Otherwise, wash your hands throughout the work day and before you leave.
- Avoid taking tools, scrap, packaging and any other miscellaneous items home.
Prevention is the best defense. Unfortunately, decontamination is difficult and may not be effective. The results depend on the cleaning methods used, the type of hazard to be removed and the surface to be cleaned. Soft, porous materials like carpet and clothing are the hardest to adequately decontaminate, and normal house cleaning and laundry products usually do not succeed.
In today's world, the risk of take-home exposures is not just limited to chemicals -- society has also been confronted by the reality that human-to-human contact can expose the home to dangerous infectious diseases like COVID-19, meaning that even office, retail and service workers should be conscientious about preventing take-home exposure from pathogens as well as chemicals.
For more information, visit www.cdc.gov or call (800) 232-4636.