Asthma at Work / 18 Jobs identified by Study

Almost 10,000 people born in Britain in 1958 were tracked for 15 years and researchers were able to identify which jobs were linked with an increased risk of developing asthma as an adult.

It was found that the workplace had a greater influence on adult-onset asthma than smoking, accounting for one in six cases of the disease compared with one in nine for smoking.

Of the 9,488 people studied, nine per cent had developed asthma by the age of 42, not including those who had it as children.

The team from Imperial College London identified 18 jobs that were linked to an increased risk of asthma.

Four of the 18 were cleaning jobs and a further three of which were likely to involve exposure to cleaning products.

Farmers, hairdressers, and printing workers were also found to have increased risk.

Farmers were approximately four times more likely to develop asthma as an adult than office workers, hairdressers were at almost double the risk, and printers at three times the risk.

Besides cleaning products, flour, enzymes, metals and textiles were among materials in the workplace identified in the study as being linked to asthma risk.

The study’s lead author, Dr Rebecca Ghosh of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health at Imperial College London, said: “This study identified 18 occupations that are clearly linked with asthma risk, but there are others that did not show up in our analysis, mainly because they are relatively uncommon.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from 

via Jobs identified that are linked to greater risk of asthma in adults – Telegraph.