“Can you do anything about getting my color back?” asked a forty-three-year-old black man with depigmented skin of his hands, forearms, lips, and ears. His affected skin areas were ivory in color. The pigment loss had begun on his hands within months of being assigned to a new job as dielectric tester. Although he had worked for eighteen years at the same company, a spark plug factory, this was the first time he had worked with a solvent. Despite wearing synthetic rubber (Neoprene®) gloves, his hands were frequently wet with the solvent, tetrachloroethylene (perchloroethylene). Because the factory environment was hot, he frequently brushed away sweat from his face with the solvent-soaked gloves. He worked in this setting for three years until being transferred, and during this time the white skin areas enlarged. Particularly significant was the pigment loss on the ventral forearms, a site of contact with the solvent when he rested his arms. He denied any strange sensations or tightness in his fingers.

Once he had been removed from the solvent work, there had been some repigmentation of his fingers. There was no family history of vitiligo, the idiopathic heritable loss of color. Nor did he have any associated illness. He denied taking any medications. Detailed studies of his blood and urine showed them to be normal as were x-rays of his hands.

A biopsy of the affected skin showed an absence of melanin pigment in the epidermis, but otherwise nothing unusual.