Carmen Wegener, an environmental health and safety colleague, faced this situation when she found 2-propyxyethanol in some screen inks used in her facility’s operations. She consulted with the lab where she normally sends industrial hygiene samples. “In some cases, they can measure the substance, but without a standard it will be up to you to interpret the result,” she says. “If they cannot measure, one option is to measure what does have a PEL (in this case, 2-butoxyethanol in the same ink) and assume that the non-PEL substance is present in the same proportion as it is in the source mixture (in this case, the ink).”
Carmen also consulted good current toxicology resources for possible toxicity trends of the non-PEL substance as compared to one in the same chemical family that does have a PEL.