Exposure to chromium from hospital cleaning

The relevance of a positive chromium patch test in females with hand eczema is very often obscure. In order to investigate the exposure to chromium in an everyday event as cleaning, the chromium content of water samples from various steps of the cleaning process in a Danish hospital was analyzed. During cleaning the chromium contamination increased above the theoretical limit necessary for sensitization. House dust contains considerable amounts of chromium, and will readily liberate it into suspension. All the chromium was found in the trivalent form.