Treating Work-Related Asthma: A Guide for Clinicians

The two keys

Managing work-related asthma comes down to avoiding the environmental triggers and controlling symptoms medically.

Avoid allergens and irritants

• Reduce exposures: cut contact at work and elsewhere with allergens, irritants and physical conditions known to worsen asthma.
• Stop smoking: where relevant, start a smoking cessation program; smoking makes asthma harder to control.
• Refer: consider a pulmonary, allergy or occupational medicine specialist to test for and identify the workplace exposures.

Change the work

• Eliminate the exposure — the best approach. Workplace controls that reduce exposure may also help.
• Individualized plan: some workers need one, depending on medical findings and how they respond to reduced exposure — for example, moving the worker away from the triggers.

Medication

The Global Initiative for Asthma sets out a stepwise approach to drug therapy. Pneumococcal and yearly influenza vaccines are also recommended.

Assess the workplace

• Safety Data Sheets: ask the employer for copies to spot possible triggers. The Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics offers a tool to check whether a substance is a known asthmagen.
• Experts: involve employee or occupational health or an industrial hygienist to look for allergens, irritants and harmful conditions.
• NIOSH help: tell patients about the free, confidential Health Hazard Evaluation Program, which can identify worksite triggers.

Videos: Faces of Work-related Asthma

A short NIOSH series of physician–patient conversations on the condition: What is work-related asthma?, Diagnosis, Impact and Treatment.

Sources

Based on "Treating Work-related Asthma," National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Two stock photographs and a video thumbnail are not reproduced.