Hazardous drugs in health care: NIOSH updates list

Washington — Some drugs used to treat cancer and other conditions can be hazardous to workers who are exposed to them. NIOSH recently updated its tool intended to help health care workers and employers identify which routinely handled drugs are considered hazardous.

The agency’s List of Hazardous Drugs in Healthcare Settings, 2024 updates the 2016 version by adding 25 drugs and removing seven. For 12 of the newly added drugs, the document includes manufacturers’ special handling information.

NIOSH defines a hazardous drug as one that’s:

• Approved for use in humans by the Federal Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
• Not otherwise regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Either accompanied by prescribing information in the “package insert” that includes manufacturers’ special handling instructions or identified as a carcinogenic, developmental, reproductive, genotoxic or other health hazard 

Health care employers are encouraged to develop their own facility-specific hazardous drugs list and a site-specific risk assessment for each drug.

Drugs reviewed for the updated list either were new drug approvals or received new safety-related warnings from FDA between January 2014 and December 2015.

In April 2023, NIOSH published Managing Hazardous Drug Exposures: Information for Healthcare Settings, which includes risk management information and descriptions of possible scenarios that workers can encounter when handling dangerous drugs.