Today's Hazardous Vapor is Diacetyl, a popular butter flavoring used in food and beverages, including holiday turkey, butter cookies, butter bomb chardonnay, and even VAPS. While it adds a savory touch to our holiday meals, daily occupational exposure can cause a devastating lung disease known as Bronchiolitis Obliterans, also known as "popcorn lung."
NIOSH recommends keeping diacetyl vapors below 5 ppb averaged over an 8-hour workday to prevent lung damage. Our lab has developed a method to measure diacetyl and related substances using personal samplers with much greater sensitivity than the NIOSH recommended exposure limit.
We’ve validated our samplers using authentic diacetyl vapors that we generate in our laboratory, making our laboratory smell like butter.
Diacetyl is only one of a series of 1,2-dione-containing substances that are used as food flavorings, mixtures of which can give foods many different characteristic smells. One scent that we have generated here in the lab is that of yogurt using a mixture of diacetyl, acetoin, and 3,4-hexanedione in our vapor generator. Keep an eye out for our upcoming discussion on 1,2-diones next week. Stay safe! hashtagHazardsInTheWorkplace hashtagLungDiseasePrevention hashtagNIOSH
