ThreadLocal cannot be used in Swing application

Since Java 1.4 it is no longer possible to use a ThreadLocal variable in code executed through SwingUtilities.invokeLater(Runnable r). This is because the thread executing this code can die and be restarted in the startup phase of the application by the sun.awt.AWTAutoShutdown.SAFETY_TIMEOUT mechanism. After thread restart the ThreadLocal variable will then be lost.