**Author details**

*Solvents, Ionic Liquids and Solvent Effects*

A [25, 26].

industry.

conditions.

workers.

**Acknowledgements**

**Conflict of interest**

**5. Conclusion**

their chemical analyses.

which increases the risk of exposure by direct contact with solvents. Thus, in such job tasks where workers are directly handling solvents for short duration, the use of gloves, safety glasses, and appropriate respiratory protective device is compulsory. The used gloves have to be made of polyvinyl alcohol or Viton® or Téflon® [25, 26]. Latex, butyl rubber, and polyethylene gloves are not suitable to be used for PCE [26]. The respiratory equipment should be equipped with gas filter type

The current study is the first one in Tunisia and Sfax city that aimed to assess the occupational exposure and health risks of PCE and TCE in the dry cleaning

Our results revealed and responded to many interrogations and suspicions about the qualitative and quantitative exposure conditions and consequently the health status of dry cleaning workers in Sfax. In fact, all facilities are not following the standardized prevention and industrial hygiene measures. Moreover, they have declared to exclusively work with PCE products; however, TCE was detected in all

Due to the inhalation exposure levels, many adverse effects are probably threatening the occupationally exposed population and even the general one, because of

As for the carcinogenic effects, considerably high cancer risks were noticed if the lifetime exposure to these solvents would have the current average levels. Actually, 17 additional cases of hematologic, liver, and kidney cancers are expected to take

Taking this into account, PCE and TCE air concentrations have to be reduced. Thus, some corrective measures were suggested in order to improve the working

We believe that the implementation of this study is very significant, at the Tunisian level, for better understanding of the dry cleaning industrial sector and for the improvement of future risk assessment studies in this field. Indeed, this pilot study provides the first occupational exposure data to TCE and PCE emissions from

We acknowledge the cooperation and efforts of all the facility managers and

Among the threshold effects, we can distinguish high risks of neurological,

The exposure assessment was achieved by means of the quantification of airborne concentrations of the chlorinated solvents via active air monitoring and

facilities, and its concentrations were high and concerning.

the location of all facilities in residential settings.

nephrotoxic, developmental, and immune effects.

randomly selected dry cleaning facilities in Sfax city.

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

place in population of 100 people.

**38**

Fatma Omrane, Imed Gargouri\* and Moncef Khadhraoui Laboratory of Environmental Engineering and EcoTechnology, LR16ES19, National School of Engineering, University of Sfax, Tunisia

\*Address all correspondence to: imed.gargouri@fmsf.rnu.tn

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
