Cleaning agents increasing cause of asthma in health-care workers

Cleaning agents increased fourfold post 2000 as a cause of occupational asthma from the Shield surveillance scheme in the West Midlands, UK. Glutaraldehyde vanished as a cause and latex notifications reduced. There were small numbers of workers with occupational asthma due to inhalational anaestetic agents (exhaled from patients during recovery), acrylates from bone cement and formaldehyde in pathologists. Health-care workers remain a high-risk group for occupational astma.

References

	Walters GI, Moore VC, McGrath EE, Burge PS, Henneberger PK, Agents and trends in health care workers’ occupational asthma, Occup Med, 2013;63:513-516,

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