But new research has claimed that there is an even more important cause of asthma than smoking – and that is working with cleaning products. The study found that 18 occupations were clearly linked to a risk of asthma. Four of them were cleaning jobs and a further three were likely to involve exposure to cleaning products.
It seems that the workplace can now be confirmed as the most common cause of adult-onset asthma for British adults born in the late 1950s, with one in six cases being attributed to it. This is even higher than smoking, which is thought to be the cause of one in nine cases.
The research team at Imperial College London tracked the development of asthma in a group of 9,488 people born in Britain in 1958. Not counting those who had childhood asthma, the number who developed asthma by age 42 was nine percent.
With this new information it now seems essential that workplaces should use all of the recommended safety equipment and procedures. Given that there is so much risk associated with your occupation it should be imperative of organisations to protect their employees from harmful substances that could put them at risk of asthma.
Asthma is an almost entirely preventable disease so if organisations can raise awareness of this issue and ensure that their staff are completely equipped to deal with any issues that might arise.