Skin Symptoms among VDT Workers and Electromagnetic Fields - a Case Referent Study

This case referent study is a part of the Office Illness Project in Northern Sweden. From a questionnaire study among 5 986 office workers, 75 VDT workers with self-reported facial skin symptoms and the same number of referents were selected for this study. The environmental electric and magnetic fields in the office as well as electromagnetic fields associated with the VDT at the workplace were measured. The aim of this pan of the project was to explore the role of the measured electromagnetic parameters in relation to skin symptoms. For most of the measured parameters there was no difference between cases and referents. However, more cases than referents were found in the highest exposure group for two of the measured parameters. For the background electric field in the room the relative risk in terms of crude odds ratio (OR) was 3.0 (95% CI: 1.2–7.2) for the high exposed group (≥31 V/m) compared with the lowest group (≤10 V/m). The same comparison for the magnetic field in the ELF-range (≥0.30 μT vs ≤0.145 μT) in front of the VDT gave an OR of 2.7 (95% CI: 1.0–6.9).