Nlandu Roger Ngatu - Occupational and Environmental Skin Disorders: Epidemiology, Current Knowledge and Perspectives for Novel Therapies

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This book focuses on occupational and environmental skin diseases in terms of epidemiology, current knowledge, and perspectives for novel therapies. As the chairperson of the Allergy and Immunotoxicology Scientific Committee (SC) in the ICOH (International Commission on Occupational Health) and also the Vice- President of the Japanese Society for Hygiene (JSH), which aims to promote human health through integration of diverse factors associated with human life and the social and natural environment, it should be announced that this book is tremendously useful for researchers in the fields of occupational and environmental health as well as for regular citizens.

The skin is one of the gateways through which foreign bodies, biological and chemical agents enter the human body to cause conditions such as irritant, allergic, infectious skin disorders or cancers. It is almost permanently exposed to hazardous substances in the work and living environments.

This book covers several skin diseases caused by occupational and environmental hazards. The first part focuses on skin irritants, sensitizers, and carcinogens. Many novel chemical substances are developed and introduced in industrial work environments, and safety risk assessment of these newly developed hazardous substances is not vigorously performed. In particular, with respect to allergic substances, the relationship between human factorssuch as sensitivities, HLA typing, and exposure frequencies and dosesand chemical characteristics is not considered uniformly according to the dose-response strategy.

Next, this book focuses on the environmental and occupational eczematous skin diseases, such as atopic and occupational contact dermatitis, with a particular consideration of risk factors, inflammatory mechanisms, pathophysiology, and therapeutic strategies, including steroids and nonsteroid agents. Since recent insights in molecular-targeting therapies for cancers and immune-related diseases such as autoimmune disorders have achieved better outcomes for various diseases, strategies to be employed for the treatment of allergic skin diseases should consider a detailed understanding of immune modulation that occurs in the course of these conditions.

The last part of this book includes environmental fungal, and also seasonal and endemic skin disorders caused by arthropods, insects, and microorganisms. I addition, it provides very informative highlights on silica dust-exposure and autoimmune diseases, particularly scleroderma. These are also very important, and a comprehensive understanding of these diseases may lead to a successful treatment and cure of people suffering from conditions resulting from the health effects of these environmental agents and associated infections internationally, especially in the developing world, including Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.

I am currently serving as chairperson of the Allergy and Immunotoxicology SC in the ICOH, which usually has a special session with the Occupational and Environmental Dermatoses SC, since these two SCs are closely related with investigating diseases and providing biological insights in allergy and immune responses. Recently, our SC published an eBook entitled Allergy and Immunotoxicology in Occupational Health in 2017 with Springer Nature publisher in the series Current Topics in Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine organized by the JSH. We recommend that people with an interest in Occupational and Environmental Skin Diseases read the aforementioned eBook to gain a better overall understanding and recognition of this field, the support required by patients with occupational and environmental skin diseases, as well as to develop preventive procedures. As an aside, there are various autoimmune diseases caused by occupational and environmental hazards, for example, systemic sclerosis is caused by silica, and vinyl chloride exposure. I hope another book that thoroughly explores cutaneous autoimmune diseases caused by occupational and environmental substances will also be planned by authors who contributed to this special book.