What to do if you are told you have asthma through your job

Most asthma is not caused by work. It occurs naturally and runs in families. It is very common. But more than one in ten cases of asthma are caused by work. There are many substances which can cause asthma at work. If you are told that your asthma has been caused by work, you should get advice quickly, both about compensation through the courts, and about benefits from the Benefits Agency.

When you know you have asthma caused by work, you normally have 3 years to start a court action. If you leave it longer than this, the 3-year time limit can sometimes be overcome. The sooner court proceedings can be started, the better it is likely to be for you. The 3 years within which you must bring a court action starts to run when you know that you have asthma caused by work.

Many people will fear to bring a compensation claim for asthma because they may lose their job as a result of having asthma or bringing a claim. Many people will wait until they have lost their jobs before they consider a claim either through the Courts or the Benefits Agency.

However, if you are in a job which has given you asthma, it is very unlikely you will be able to continue in that job anyway. Your employers will not want you in the job in case you bring legal action against them, and they will not want to damage your health further than it already has been. Your doctor will nearly always advise you to change your job if possible. This is partly because, the longer you remain exposed to whatever has caused your asthma, the smaller your chances in many cases of getting better. If you are lucky, your employers may be able to move you to a different job, but this is not an option for many people. It is important to complete appropriate investigations in the work place, serial measurements of lung function, before leaving your job.

If you want to claim through the Courts, you have to be able to show that your employers were to blame. Regulations make it very likely that your employers were to blame. These Regulations include The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations (COSHH) 1999 and its predecessors.

The Workplace (Health Safety and Welfare) Regulations, and

The Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations 1994.

COSHH required employers to weigh up the risks to the health of employees arising from exposure to hazardous substances, and to prevent or, where this is not reasonably practicable, adequately control exposure to such substances. Employers may have to monitor exposure to hazardous substances and create health surveillance for their employees.

A European directive, the Chemical Agents Directive, establishes minimum requirements for protecting health and safety of workers from risks created by the presence or use of hazardous chemical agents.

In 1989, the Health and Safety Executive established a project called SWORD (surveillance of work related and occupational respiratory disease) which has amassed a huge amount of information about the causes of asthma at work. In London, the Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute is a significant source of knowledge about occupational asthma.

Not everyone who develops occupational asthma has a strong claim against his or her employer or the manufacturer. The law says that the risk of you getting asthma must have been foreseeable. In addition, your employer may have complied with Regulations by reducing dust or fumes to very small levels. But the fact that you developed asthma at work and still have symptoms from it often points to some fault by your employer. In practice, employers will usually accept blame if your solicitor presses ahead with a court action.

You will have to remember all the jobs you have done and identify those which are likely to have given you asthma. This should be obvious in most cases, and is often one recent job, often your current job.

As soon as you are told that you have occupational asthma, or your doctor says you might have occupational asthma, you should claim the appropriate benefits from the Benefits Agency.

At the same time, consider getting compensation from whoever exposed you to the substance that gave you asthma, usually your employers, but sometimes the manufacturers of the product.

If the cause is removed at an early stage, you can make a complete recovery. If you remain working with the substance that has caused your asthma, it is more likely that your asthma will become chronic and incurable.

You will not want to leave your job unless it is absolutely necessary. You will need to know that you have asthma rather than some other illness that looks like asthma. You will need to know that your asthma is caused by something at work and has not come on for other reasons. You will need to know whether your asthma is actually caused by something at work, or whether you already had asthma that is being made worse by your job. A doctor used to treating occupational asthma will be able to answer these questions after taking a history from you and carrying out various investigations. A GP will often be at a disadvantage compared with an occupational physician or chest physician in making a diagnosis of occupational asthma.

That is why it is important that your GP refers you to a specialist doctor. In Manchester and the North West, the main centre is the North West Lung Centre at Wythenshawe Hospital, but there are other centres in London, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle.

If other colleagues at work have developed the same symptoms that you have, this makes it more likely that your problem is occupational, but it is not conclusive.

You need to ask your GP to refer you to a chest physician with experience of occupational asthma as soon as you suffer symptoms that you think might be caused by work. The cause may be obvious, but not always.

As well as taking an occupational history from you, and carrying out clinical examination and lung function tests, the hospital specialist will probably arrange for you to test your peak flow regularly, and for you to complete a diary or chart which describes the pattern of your symptoms. It is important to do this conscientiously for the exercise to be worthwhile, and many people do not have the patience to do this over several weeks. As well as peak flow testing, your doctors may arrange skin tests to identify what is causing your symptoms.

Or they may test in hospital the effect of your inhaling the substance suspected of causing your asthma. This is a difficult and time-consuming procedure, and will only be done if the cause of your problem cannot be found in other ways, or when your asthma is so bad that you cannot risk any more exposure at work without knowing its cause.

It may take a hospital specialist weeks or even months to identify the cause of your asthma.

As a general rule, the longer you continue to work while being exposed to the substance which has caused your asthma, the more likely it is that you will be permanently disabled by the asthma.

Doctors are cautious in diagnosing occupational asthma because they know that avoiding the substance causing it will mean changing or losing your job, and that it is very difficult for most people to change trades or professions. In these situations, wearing the proper type of respiratory protection with its own air supply is a short-term solution, but not a permanent solution. If you have asthma you may not be able to tolerate wearing such equipment, and the nature of many jobs makes the use of such equipment difficult or inappropriate.

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