Neuropsychological impairment among former microelectronics workers

Although chemicals posing potential neurotoxic hazards are commonly used in the microelectronics industry, there has been no systematic study of possible chronic nervous system effects in microelectronics workers. The objective of the present study was to assess neuropsychological functions of a group of former microelectronics plant assembly workers and a group of referents, using a matched pair design. During employment, the former microelectronics workers had been exposed to multiple organic solvents, including trichloroethylene, xylene, chlorofluorocarbons and trichloroethane. Referents were recruited from the same geographic region. From a pool of 180 former workers and 157 referents, 67 pairs were matched on the basis of age, sex, ethnicity, educational level, sex and number of children. Comparison of results on the subtests of the California Neuropsychological Screening Battery-Revised (CNS-R) revealed significantly lower performance by the former microelectronics workers on tests of attention/concentration, verbal ability, memory functions, visuospatial functions, visuomotor speed, cognitive flexibility, psychomotor speed, and reaction time (t-test for pairs or Wilcoxon Signed Rank p less than 0.05). No significant differences were observed for performance on tests assessing mental status, visual recall, tactile function and learning. This overall pattern of impairment is consistent with organic solvent-related chronic toxic encephalopathy, and possible early stages of dementia. These findings underline the need for more studies among workers currently or previously employed in microelectronics industries.