Platinum is one of the modern industrial world's most important chemicals. It is a primary catalyst in automotive catalytic converters that remove pollution from gasoline and diesel engines throughout the world. It is used in refining of petroleum, manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, production of nitric acid that is used in nitrate fertilizer, and many more industrial applications. Platinum cannot be refined, however, without creation of chloroplatinic acid, which is a potent sensitizer, and every year a portion of platinum industry workers is sensitized. If left exposed, these workers would suffer increasing symptoms of respiratory distress, and eventually asthma, perhaps severe. This is a concern to the workers, to the platinum industry, and to health officials and occupational regulators.

The platinum industry practices careful control of exposure to chloroplatinic acid, and maintains medical surveillance over workers to ensure that exposures do not continue after sensitization. The regulatory exposure level, 2 micrograms/cubic meter, is very strict. But these steps have not succeeded in preventing all chloroplatinate sensitization.

Regulators in the European Union and United States have recently proposed drastic reductions in regulatory exposure limits, based solely upon a study performed in the early 1990s in a German factory. That study, and its relationship to proposed EU and US exposure limits, is reviewed in "Chloroplatinate Toxicity and Merget", a paper presented at the 2010 Annual Conference of the International Precious Metals Institute.