Hairdressers can be exposed to a unique mixture of potentially hazardous chemicals. There are over 600,000 hairdressers in the U.S. and it is estimated that 31% are Black or Hispanic and 92.3% are female. Racial and ethnic minorities in this workforce may be disproportionately subjected to occupational chemical exposures due the unique products used and services provided; however, few studies have investigated chemical exposures among minorities working in this service sector. To help address this knowledge gap, we compared chemical features detected in urine collected from a pilot sample of U.S. female hairdressers (n=23) and office workers (n=17) using a nontargeted liquid chromatography–high-resolution mass spectrometry method. Urine specimens were minimally processed to maximize compounds detected and were analyzed via reverse-phase liquid chromatography coupled to a Q Exactive HF orbitrap mass spectrometer. Raw data were processed with Compound Discoverer for feature detection and grouping, background signal removal, QC peak area correction, and compound annotation. Compounds with a median peak area ratio (hairdressers/controls) &gt;1.5 were selected for manual review. Preliminary results show greater peak areas for several compounds in urine from hairdressers compared to office worker controls; additional analyses to identify these compounds with reference materials are ongoing.

Exploring occupational chemical exposures in a cohort of U.S. hairdressers via high-resolution mass spectrometry

ACS Spring 2022

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