Several groups on occupational health and preventive medicine have expressed major concern over organic solvent exposure and its possible adverse health effects on humans. This has been extensively studied for over a century and well described in many recent studies. However, there also exist several research gaps in studying its dose-response relationship and the real attribution of organic solvent exposure to cause the disease. Some of the symptoms studied are not specific to the occupational disease because of mixed exposures and are often already an existing medical condition of the worker. Some are biased to show that the exposed workers are impaired and the unexposed workers are not. Inadvertent lack of study in the important socio-demographic factors to ensure the comparability of the study groups and the elimination of confounders like alcohol intake and smoking are among the factors that are commonly overlooked in the study of volatile chemicals. Lastly, some of the diagnostic tools used to prove the hypothesis on the pathological process that caused the impairment are non-sensitive and non-specific. (Author)

In: Acta Medica Philippina, 2007 vol. 41 (1) pages: 59-61