Nasal mucociliary clearance in hairdressers: correlation to exposure to hair spray.

It has previously been demonstrated that hair spray sprayed onto the hair of experimental subjects reduces the mucociliary transport in the trachea and nose. Ladies hairdressers are exposed to the effects of hair spray throughout the whole working day, and we therefore investigated the nasal mucociliary transport of 60 hairdressers and 15 control subjects before and after a working day by the saccharin method. We found a significant reduction in the mucociliary transport of the ladies hairdressers during the working day (P less than 0.001), but not in control subjects. The reduction in mucociliary transport could be correlated to the amount of hair spray applied by the individual hairdresser to the hair of the customer during the day.