Accumulation of fibers in the eyes of workers handling man-made mineral fiber products.

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Abstract
The external eye can be considered a passive dust sampler. Foreign material deposited in the conjunctival cul-de-sac becomes enclosed by mucus fibrils. The fibrils adhere to the conjunctival mucus thread. By removing the mucus, man-made mineral fibers deposited in the eye can be studied. A simple method has been developed and the sampling characteristics of the eye for nonrespirable fibers was described. The numbers of nonrespirable fibers accumulated in the eyes correlated with total dust exposure dose (r = 0.92) and with the nonrespirable fiber exposure dose (r = 0.82). There was no correlation between the airborne fiber concentration and the number of fibers in the mucus thread alone.

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