Occupational asthma from finger printing
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I have a patient who wonders whether finger printing makes her asthma worse. Do you have any information on this?
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Fingerprint retrieval requires a finely divided material to be dusted onto the surface to be sampled. It is likely that the particle size of the materials is small enough to inhale. Dark surfaces are usually dusted with aluminium powder, which is generally thought not to be a cause of asthma. Workers in aluminium smelters however are at high risk of occupational asthma. The cause is not established, but the main particulate exposure is to aluminium sodium fluoride, which may be the cause. Occupational asthma also occurs in casters of aluminium, one case report showed a positive challenge to aluminium chloride. The relationship of these observations to fingerprinting is speculative, but a specific challenge should be easy to set up in an experienced challenge centre which should clarify the problem. Pale surfaces are usually dusted with carbon black, which has been implicated in occupational bronchitis but not asthma. More specialist finger print retrieval systems do involve recognized respiratory sensitisers. Cyanoacrylates are used for retrieving prints from plastic materials, and Lycopodium is a constituent of a least one fluorescent finger printing powder (Lycopodium is a plant derived lubricant commonly used in condoms).
This reply has been made with the assistance of the occupational health service of the West Midlands police. If anybody has further observations, or has seen asthma in finger print retrievers, please would they add their comments? I have a patient who told me that her asthma was precipitated by fingerprint dusting, but I never investigated it further.
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I am a Fingerprint officer with an interest in this, if the original poster could contact me?
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I have further information on a recognised case of aluminium fingerprint powder causing respiratory illness.
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There are comnections also to some associated processes typical of their profession, that could contribute. Can you possibly contact me to compare notes.
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These forums are anonymous, so it will be hard to contact users. You could enter your email address in the message, preferably obfuscated a bit to avoid getting spam (eg john dot smith @ company dot com). You could use the contact form at the bottom of the page. This will email the website and if you both did this we could put you together. Alternatively have the discussion in the forums (eg by adding comments here)
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