psychomotor effects of mixed organic solvents on rubber workers

background: exposure to organic solvents is common among workers. objective: to assess neurobehavioral effects of long-term exposure to organic solvents among rubber workers in tehran, iran. methods: across-sectional study was conducted on 223 employees of a rubber industry. the participants completed a data collection sheet on their occupational and medical history, and demographic characteristics including age, work experience, education level; they performed 6 psychiatric tests on the neurobehavioral core test battery (nctb) that measure simple reaction time, short-term memory (digit span, benton), eye-hand coordination (purdue pegboard, pursuit aiming), and perceptual speed (digit symbol). results: workers exposed and not exposed to organic solvents had similar age and education distribution. the mean work experience of the exposed and non-exposed workers was 5.9 and 4.4 years, respectively. the exposed workers had a lower performance compared to non-exposed workers in all psychomotor tests. after controlling for the confounders by logistic regression analysis, it was found that exposure to organic solvents had a significant effect on the results of digit symbols, digit span, benton, aiming, and simple reaction time tests. no significant effect was observed in pegboard test. conclusion: occupational exposure to organic solvent can induce subtle neurobehavioral changes among workers exposed to organic solvents; therefore, periodical evaluation of the central nervous system by objective psychomotor tests is recommended among those who are chronically exposed to organic solvents.