Don't be a victim of surgical smoke

If you saw a low-lying cloud that was labeled clearly with its contents, and the label contained the words benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, methane, phenol, styrene, and toluene, would you go out of your way to walk through that cloud and inhale those toxic chemicals? Of course not. But you expose yourself to these same toxic chemicals each time you participate in a surgical procedure in which smoke from tissue interaction with an electrosurgical device or laser is not evacuated. The aerosols produced when lasers or electrosurgical devices are used contain particular matter, gases, mutagens, carcinogens-and sometimes, DNA components.