Causes for occupational skin diseases in farmers other than pesticides

Agriculture belongs to industries with a very high risk for occupational skin diseases. This has been proven by statistics from countries like Finland and the USA. In contrast to this, only 10-20 cases are diagnosed each year in Poland, which in the author's opinion points on the insufficient detection. This is due to the low awareness of the problem among farmers and their doctors, and due to the lack of prophylactic medical checks in agriculture.

In this chapter, causes for farmers' occupational dermatoses are discussed with the exception of pesticides, which are presented elsewhere in this monograph (you may also refer to the author's article on skin diseases caused by pesticides). The most frequent causes of occupational dermatoses in agriculture are plants (grain dust, straw dust, hay dust, plant saps) and animals (dander, epithelia and excreta), followed by pesticides, metals and rubber additives. Infections by microorganisms transmitted from farm animals are less frequent.

Wersja polska (HTML)