About the Authors

Lorenz Barleon

L.Barleon@diak-ka.de

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University Medical Center, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

Jochen Wahl

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University Medical Center, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

Peter Morfeld

Affiliations Institute for Occupational Medicine, Environmental Medicine and Prevention Research, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany, Institute for Occupational Epidemiology and Risk Assessment of Evonik Industries, Essen, Germany

Claudia Deters

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University Medical Center, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

Andrea Lichtmeß

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University Medical Center, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

Sibylle Haas-Brähler

Affiliation Occupational Health, Evonik Industries, Hanau, Germany

Uta Müller

Affiliation Occupational Health, Evonik Industries, Essen, Germany

Rolf Breitstadt

Affiliation Occupational Health, Evonik Industries, Essen, Germany

Norbert Pfeiffer

Affiliation Department of Ophthalmology, University Medical Center, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

Competing Interests

One or more authors have an affiliation to the commercial funders of this research study (Evonik Industries). The corresponding author declares, on behalf of all authors, that there are no competing interests. Evonik Industries provided an unrestricted grant for this study. Evonik Industries provided some of the equipment, qualified personnel, transportation and accommodation. The interest of Evonik Industries was to supply preventive health care for their employees. Evonik Industries have no business activity in ophthalmology. Apart from the co-authors, the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There is no conflict of interest of the sponsor or the members of Evonik Industries. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: LB JW SH RB UM NP. Performed the experiments: LB CD AL. Analyzed the data: LB JW PM SH. Wrote the paper: LB JW PM SH NP.