NIOSH Releases Updated List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings
NIOSH has released the 2024 update of its List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings (PDF), a tool that helps employers identify drugs that are dangerous to the health and safety of workers who handle them. According to NIOSH’s press release, the new document revises the 2016 version of the list by removing seven drugs and adding 25, including 12 with special handling information provided by manufacturers. The drugs reviewed for this update were those that received new approvals or new safety warnings from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research between January 2014 and December 2015, NIOSH states.
Two drugs removed from the list are the type 2 diabetes medication liraglutide and the antineoplastic agent pertuzumab. NIOSH announced in January 2024 that it was considering removal of these drugs from the list and sought public comment on this action. Through its reevaluations, the agency had determined that the intrinsic molecular properties of liraglutide and pertuzumab and the nature of the specific hazards posed by exposure to these drugs mean that they are “not likely to pose [hazards] to workers in healthcare settings,” according to the Federal Register notice published at the time. A summary of all drugs removed from the 2024 version of the hazardous drug list and of all drugs moved to different tables may be found in pages 25–29 of the document.
The 2024 version of the hazardous drug list also reduces the number of tables to two, reorganizes the remaining tables, notes drugs that have approval under a biological license application, updates the American Hospital Formulary Services classification and nomenclature of drugs, and removes out-of-date supplementary information.
NIOSH’s list of hazardous drugs in healthcare builds on a NIOSH alert from 2004 that warned healthcare employers and workers of the risks of working with hazardous drugs and discussed measures they could take to protect their health. The list is part of a suite of tools developed by the agency to help employers and workers identify hazardous drugs and handle them correctly, which also includes the publications Managing Hazardous Drug Exposures: Information for Healthcare Settings and Procedures for Developing the NIOSH List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings. NIOSH’s webpage on hazardous drug exposures in healthcare provides additional information on this topic.
The 2024 List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings may be downloaded as a PDF from NIOSH’s website. More information on the updated list is available in the agency’s news release.