Eyespy

A 9 year old girl presented with an 18 month history of an itchy semicircular eczematous eruption on her upper posterior thighs. All the toilet seats in her house had been changed to wood in the previous two years. She admitted to spending prolonged periods sitting on the toilet while reading. She was patch tested and developed a positive reaction to shavings of the wood varnish. Contact dermatitis caused by the wood or the varnish components in toilet seats was commonly seen in the 1960s. The recent growing popularity of wooden toilet seats may result in a resurgence of this unusual distribution of allergic contact dermatitis.