PubMed1990
A questionnaire was presented to female university students concerning the relationship between the use of household detergent and the occurrence of impaired hands. In addition, in order to determine whether there was any relationship between the amounts and qualities of skin surface film and the incidence of impairments of hands, the following experiment was undertaken. From among the 1,861 female university students, 28 girls between the ages of 21-22 were chosen; 14 of whom had complained of impaired skin of hands (impairment group) attributable to household detergent during the past one year and 14 who had not experienced such disorders, either of the hands or elsewhere (non-impairment group) during the same period. The method of collecting skin surface lipids and sweat simultaneously is for the subjects to wear special gloves made of a given cotton fabric by the modified method of Straus & Pochi for a fixed of time. Then, the skin surface lipids and sweat were analyzed to determine the differences between the impairment group and the non-impairment group. The following results were obtained: 1) Of the 1,861 people surveyed, 496 or 26.7% of them stated that they had suffered from impaired skin due to the use of household detergents during the past one year. The most frequent site was the hands, including wrists, and the main symptom was dry skin. There were some seasonal changes in the occurrence of the impaired skin, with the highest occurrence in winter. There was a significant difference between the occurrence in winter, and that in spring, summer and autumn (p less than 0.01). 2) During the hot season, (average temperature 23-29 degrees C), the arithmetic averages and their standard deviation of the skin surface lipids of both the impairment group (N = 14) and the non-impairment group (N = 14) were 29.10 +/- 7.89 micrograms/cm2/8 hr and 45.98 +/- 23.29 micrograms/cm2/8 hr, respectively. In the cold season, (average temperature 5-13 degrees C), these become 31.95 +/- 16.69 micrograms/cm2/8 hr, and 53.45 +/- 24.16 micrograms/cm2/ 8 hr, respectively. In both these seasons, it was found that the amount of skin surface lipids of the impairment group was significantly less (hot season p less than 0.05, cold season p less than 0.01) than that of the non-impairment group.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)