Toxic printer contact dermatitis due to toner dust a service accident?

OVG Münster: No very high disease risk of a taxman

Contact dermatitis caused by toner dust can not be recognized as a "service accident" even in administrative occupations. The probability of a disease was not higher than inflammatory skin reactions in other professions, as the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) North Rhine-Westphalia in Münster in a decision announced on Tuesday, July 12, 2016, decided (Az .: 3 A 3510/13).

Contact dermatitis refers to inflammatory skin reactions to contact with certain substances. "Stimulus response" and warning signs of the skin is initially mostly a burning and itching. Remains too frequent contact with the substance, followed by redness, swelling and eczema.

In the specific case, a clerk and later head of the department of a tax office claimed that toner dust from laser printers had triggered contact dermatitis. The dust is contained on every document to be processed but also in the air.

The regional tax office responsible for the accident compensation did not recognize this as a "service accident". The Administrative Court of Münster dismissed the action in the first instance. With its decision of 8 July 2016, the OVG Münster did not allow the appeal against it.

While civil servants could also recognize illness as a "service accident" (similar to an occupational disease among other workers). However, the prerequisite is that the risk of illness is significantly higher for work than for the rest of the population. Therefore, even if the report by the taxman that toner dust could cause contact dermatitis is insufficient. Because that is not yet proven that in the tax office, the risk of illness is particularly high, and that this probability is much higher than other substances in other professions, such as hairdressers.

Nationwide, there are about 16 million laser printers in factories. Measured by this, the likelihood of contact dermatitis due to toner dust is "possibly in the low single-digit percentage range". Therefore one could not speak altogether of a high illness risk, emphasized the OLG. The defining cause here was therefore not the working conditions but an individual predisposition. mwo / fle