Effects of long-term occupational solvent exposure on contrast sensitivity and performance in visual search

Sensitive and easily applicable screening tests are greatly needed for the early detection of nervous system dysfunction in people working with neurotoxic substances. Previous studies have shown that long-term solvent exposure may cause deficits in visual perception. We, therefore, studied the effects of long-term occupational solvent exposure and chronic encephalopathy on performance in three vision tests novel in the present context. Two visual search tasks were used: the letter search test measured the speed of finding a letter in an array of numerals, and the pop-out search test required the observer to detect the presence or absence of a tilted line segment in an array of vertical line segments. With the letter contrast sensitivity test we measured the contrast threshold for the identification of band-pass filtered letters. Before testing, comprehensive eye examination was carried out to reveal any structural or functional abnormality and to ensure correct refraction. The patients had healthy eyes, 2 out of 14 had reduced contrast sensitivity (Vistech) and 5 out of 14 had deficits in colour vision (FM 100). In both visual search tasks, the patients were statistically highly significantly (p < 0.001) slower than the age-matched control observers. Instead, in the contrast sensitivity test, the difference between the patient and the control group was small relative to normal variability although still statistically significant (p < 0.05). The results suggest that visual search tests can be useful in evaluating and characterising the effects of long-term solvent exposure on visual perception. Because our patients' letter contrast sensitivity was only moderately deteriorated, it seems that the observed defect of visual search cannot be explained by deteriorated letter identification alone, although it can be a contributory factor. Rather, the finding suggests that the speed by which visual information is transmitted and/or processed in the central visual system has become considerably slower.