Page 15 - Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2010

© Benaki Phytopathological Institute
Tsakirakis et al. 14
ods. The specificity of the method was veri-
fied by the well-resolved peaks obtained for
a.s. in combination with the facts that: i) no
interferences from other compounds were
observed, and ii) no signal peak values ex-
ceeding 10% of the respective lowest fortifi-
cation level were detected in the blank sam-
ples of the tested specimens.
Results
As presented in Table 3, the following levels
of exposure were obtained. Potential der-
mal exposure (PDE) corresponding to the to-
tal amount of iprodione detected in/on the
outer and the inner coverall ranged for the
ten applications from 240 to 2590 (mean val-
ue 1629) mg/kg a.s. For the operators wear-
ing Type A coveralls, the PDE values ranged
from 240 to 2590 (mean value 1169) mg/kg
a.s., while for the operators using Type B
coverall ranged from 1562 to 2557 mg/kg
a.s. (mean value 2089) mg/kg a.s.
The actual dermal exposure (ADE) repre-
sented by the amounts of a.s. measured in/
on the inner coveralls ranged for the ten ap-
plications from 2.5 to 98.9 (mean value 33.5)
mg/kg a.s. applied. For the operators us-
ing coverall Type A the ADE values ranged
from 2.5 to 20.2 (mean value 9.2) mg/kg a.s.,
while for the operators using coverall Type B
ranged from 21.8 to 98.9 (mean value 57.7)
mg/kg a.s.
The potential hand exposure (sum of
inner and outer glove residues) for the ten
applications ranged between 4.1 and 39.0
(mean value 14.6) mg/kg a.s. The respective
values for the actual hand exposure (inner
glove residues) were between 0.2 and 3.8
(mean value 1.0) mg/kg a.s.
The head exposure values (a.s. residues
in caps multiplied by a factor of 2) ranged
between 1.7 and 213 (mean value 44.3) mg/
kg a.s. and the potential inhalation exposure
(a.s. residues in air sampler tubes multiplied
by a factor of 29/2) was between 0.48 and
2.90 (mean value 1.13) mg inhaled/kg a.s. for
the ten applications.
Discussion and Conclusions
The exposure levels for the trunk and leg
parts (outer jacket and outer pants residues)
were compared to the respective results of
previous work of our team related to oper-
ator exposure trials performed in pepper
greenhouses in Crete (5). The application in
those trials involved the use of spray guns,
which is the conventional application meth-
od for the greenhouses in the specific re-
gion, while the rest of the application condi-
tions were comparable to the present work.
The comparison of the respective exposure
values in mg/day at the 75th percentile (data
not presented) showed that, with the con-
ventional method, the PDE was 6 times low-
er than that of the present work, where the
new application method with Νovi-F (75.4
versus 476.8 mg/day) was used. The ADE
was 30 times lower in the conventional ap-
plication method (0.41 versus 12.12 mg/day).
For comparison purposes the respective
data expressed in mg/kg a.s. are presented
in Table 4. From the aforementioned trial re-
sults it is apparent that the new application
tool does not provide up to now positive ev-
Table 4: Comparison of exposure results (mg/kg a.s.) between conventional1 (spray guns)
and new (Novi-F) application equipment.
Dosimeters
Exposure (mg/kg a.s.)2
Spray gun
Coverall Type A
Novi-F
Coverall Type A
Spray gun
Coverall Type B
Novi-F
Coverall Type B
Inner Coverall 0.41 7.27 1.32 49.6
Outer coverall 123 692 138 2004
1 The comparison refers to the data of the conventional application with spray guns (4).
2 The exposure values correspond to the geometric means.