Allergens exposure assessment

Abstract

Many allergens are widely used in both environmental and occupational products. In many cases, it is difficult to know all the ingredients of a product, since most products are not sufficiently labeled. To diagnose and prevent allergic contact dermatitis, the demonstration of allergens in products from the patient's environment is important. Chemical analysis of a product can make it possible to demonstrate the presence or absence of known allergens. Simple spot tests or documented analytical methods, such as thin-layer chromatography (TLC), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography (GC), atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS), and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) can be used.Moreover, with chemical methods, the purity of a substance can be checked and new allergens can be isolated and identified. Advanced methods such as mass spectrometry (MS), nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), and infrared spectrophotometry (IR) are often required to identify isolated allergens. In this chapter, some principal chemical methods and some examples of chemical methods for dermatological applications are described.