Facial skin complaints and work at visual display units. An epidemiologic study of office employees

A questionnaire about skin rashes and their symptoms was sent to 3877 randomly selected office employees with different degrees of exposure to video display units (participation rate 96.6%). From this group 809 randomly selected persons were examined and interviewed. Itching and burning sensations with few visible signs were more common among persons who were highly exposed than among those in the nonexposed category. Objective facial signs were not significantly more common among persons in the highly exposed category. No dose-response effect was observed regarding the amount of video display unit exposure and objective skin signs. Unilateral skin rashes and skin malignancies were found in the same frequency in both highly exposed and the nonexposed persons. This study does not provide support for the hypothesis that video display unit work induces any recognized type of facial skin disease.