Aircraft building exposes workers to irritant and sensitizing products.
The aim of this article was to study occupational dermatoses among aircraft workers over 25 years.
The files of aerospace workers referred between 1990 and 2015 were extracted from the database of the McGill University Health Centre contact dermatitis clinic. These were subdivided according to demographics, type of work, patch testing results, and final diagnosis.
Of 305 workers, 58% were 40 years or younger; one third were women. Onset of dermatitis varied from 2 months to 25 years, but 120 cases (39%) occurred during the first 3 years. Fifty-one percent of the cases involved assemblers, and 27% were composite material technicians, which were overrepresented as they constitute 10% of the workforce. Of the 305 workers, 152 suffered from allergic contact dermatitis, and 96 had irritant contact dermatitis. Of those with allergic contact dermatitis, 124 reacted to epoxy-based workplace products, but only 48 had positive patch tests to commercially available epoxy allergens.
More than 60% of the cases of epoxy allergy would have been missed without testing with workplace products.
From the Division of Dermatology, Department of Medicine, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal General Hospital, Québec, Canada.
Address reprint requests to Denis Sasseville, MD, FRCPC, Montreal General Hospital, Room L8.210 1650 Cedar Ave, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3G 1A4. E-mail: denis.sasseville@mcgill.ca.
This study was funded by a grant from the Canadian Dermatology Foundation.
D.S. receives royalties from UpToDate (Wolters Kluwer Health). C.L. and L.M. have no funding or conflicts of interest to declare.
