Dermal exposure: a decade of real progress

Dermal exposure assessment explores the dynamic interaction between environmental contaminants and the skin. Phenol poisonings due to percutaneous absorption were recognized as an occupational health hazard as early as 1880, and the introduction of tetraethyl lead as a gasoline additive in the 1920’s resulted in multiple fatalities due to occupational skin exposure (Diechmann, 1949; Hamilton et al., 1925). The recent fatal poisoning of a university researcher in the United States from absorption of dimethyl mercury drew public attention not only to the ability of chemicals to move through healthy skin, but also to the inadequacy of gloves often used for protection in laboratory settings (Smith, 1997). Despite these dramatic events, dermal exposure assessment has remained a nascent field of scientific inquiry for most of the 20 century, caught as it is between the serious problem of occupational dermatitis and occupational hygiene’s primary focus on respiratory health hazards. Yet substantial advances in the science of dermal exposure assessment have occurred during the past ten years. If the 1980s were a time of widespread recognition of the importance of skin exposure in modern industrial and residential environments, the 1990s have seen the beginnings of a systematic characterization of the field. This issue of theAnnalspresents the findings of a group of dedicated occupational health scientists from across the European Community, and provides a timely update of conceptual and methodological advances in workplace dermal exposure assessment. The genesis of this effort can be found in a workshop on dermal exposure at the 1992 meeting of International Occupational Hygiene Association in Brussels, Belgium (Marquart et al., 1994). A subsequent