Contact dermatitis to dibutylthiourea in swimming goggles

The findings seem to indicate that in these workers, a high pre-employment SVL at selected sites may predict later development of irritant dermatitis in risky exposure situations. Hence the proposition that these workers have a diminished barrier capacity seems attractive. Also there is some indication that the oil exposure in work station C increases SVL over time, and thus perhaps corneum damage. In fact, all cases occurred at this work site. However, the results must be interpreted with caution, one of the reasons being the incomplete follow-up of 12 workers. In some workers, there are missing observations due to instrument failure and absenteeism in a particular week, for which no weightage or covariance adjustments were made in the data. Further studies are required to evaluate the role of SVL monitoring in persons at risk of irritant dermatitis.