Permeation of polychlorinated biphenyls and solutions of these substances through selected protective clothing materials

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been used in a number of applications, particularly in the electric power industry. While these materials are no longer manufactured in the United States, they still exist in the field. Because of the hazardous nature of these compounds, effective chemical protective clothing is required. The permeation of neat PCBs, and solutions with trichlorobenzene and paraffin oil, through 11 different protective garment materials was determined. These experiments were done both with a permeation cell with water collection medium, and by periodically swiping thumb cots which contained the challenge liquids. Contamination was a continuing problem because of the resinous, nonvolatile properties of PCBs. While the results from the two methods were not identical, they did agree qualitatively. The best protection against PCBs was provided by nitrile, Viton, Viton SF and Vitrile. While the results with PVA and Teflon were also very good, these materials have other characteristics which may make their use suspect. For most of the other materials, the performance depended on the challenge liquid. The weight and volume changes which occurred when the materials were soaked in the challenge liquids were determined. The volume changes of 80 percent of those challenge/material combinations which exhibited breakthrough correlated with the breakthrough times normalized to the square of the material thickness.