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able for this unusual storage to take place. Most of the particle
sizes of the hair sprays are small enough to enter the alveoli
(McLaughlin and Bidstrup).
SARCOIDOSIS
Dr. Read, general practitioner of Longfield, Kent, whose consent
I obtained to X-ray a hairdresser working in Bermondsey, asked
me to see a most interesting case of another female hairdresser, aged
28, who had had some 12 years experience and had been using sprays
for seven years and who is now well and back at hairdressing in a
part-time capacity.
She, in fact, in March 1962, had developed erythema nodosum
with pyrexia and, subsequently, a classical picture of sarcoidosis
developed with X-ray changes in the chest that could be mistaken
for hair spray lung disease in view of her occupation.
She was treated in York, having temporarily moved to her
mother's residence there, where she could be more carefully looked
after. I am grateful to Dr. Laing, Consultant Medical Specialist
at the County Hospital York, for forwarding full details of this case
which indicates that hairdressers using lacquer hair sprays daily
are as liable as any other person to develop ordinary sarcoidosis
which, fortunately, is rare.
I am certain that hair spray lung disease is extremely rare and
the diagnosis is not easy. However, withdrawals from hairspraying
usually clears the X-ray picture to a variable, but significant, extent
fairly quickly. There was no such clearing in the above mentioned
case of sarcoidosis despite a long absence from work. Resumption
of working in sprays has not affected the X-ray picture at all. The
patient is now reasonably fit.
In any consideration of the hazards of lacquer hairspray, full
reference must be made to the work of Dr. McLaughlin and Dr.
Bidstrup whose very full and excellent account in "The Effects
of Hair Lacquer Spray on the Lungs" covered a survey of 505 persons
working in a representative cross-section of the female
hairdressing business in the London area. This survey did not
uncover a single case of their spray lung disease.
THESAUROSIS
However, as in the course of my investigations came the case
mentioned earlier of sarcoidosis in a hairdresser from outside the
Bermondsey area, so Dr. McLaughlin also had a lady referred to
him from outside the London area, but she was proved, by exhaustive
investigation, to be a fully established case of hair spray lung
disease.
It can be seen that the likelihood of developing this disease is
still very remote but that, nevertheless, one proved case exists out
of 756 hairdressers examined; this being the total in all the various
known surveys undertaken so far in the United Kingdom.