The international conference Occupational and Environmental Exposures of Skin to Chemicals - 2005 (OEESC-2005) was held at the Karolinska Institutet (Solna Campus, Berzeliuslab.) in Stockholm, Sweden, 12 – 15 June 2005.

It brought together occupational and environmental health professionals, dermatologists, laboratory scientists, policy-makers and others to focus on improved prevention of local and systemic injury and disease caused by exposing skin to chemicals.

Plenary talks, posters, workshops, vendor presentations and short courses provided technical information, and social events encouraged informal communication. Check the Program.

A plenary session and a workshop as held for each of six themes:

Irritants and Wet Work (published summary),
Quantitative Risk Assessment,
Exposure Reduction,
Process-Based, Qualitative Risk Assessment,
Systemic Toxics, and
Allergens.

Posters were accepted on a wide variety of research and prevention subjects. Extended abstracts will be published in on-line and paper Proceedings. In addition, vendors displayed products and presented technical seminars, and experts presented short courses in a variety of subjects for occupational and environmental hygienists and clinicians.

This follows the very successful first conference in the series (International Conference on Occupational and Environmental Exposures of Skin to Chemicals: Science and Policy), which was held near Washington, DC, in September 2002 (Proceedings of that conference are available at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/skin/conference/index.html).

A third conference in the series OEESC-2007 is planned for mid-2007 in Golden, Colorado, USA.