This page explains what employers must do to protect their workers from work-related lung disease and how competent specialists can help them.
Protect your workers
As an employer, you're obliged by law to control the risks to your workers from exposure to hazardous substances.
By protecting your workers effectively now, you can prevent them from suffering from severe, often incurable, lung-related health problems in the future.
Identify risks and control them
If your workers could be exposed to hazardous substances, you must assess and manage the risk to them.
Some common hazardous substances are:
- silica dust, found in stone, rock, sand and clays
- welding fumes
- flour dust
- wood dust
- asbestos (specific regulations and guidance apply for work involving asbestos)
If you're unsure if a substance is harmful, get specialist advice on assessing risks across your business.
Each workplace has unique risks which can depend on a number of factors, including:
- the type of substances workers are exposed to
- the tasks being performed
- the work environment
Even if you work with the same substances used by others, the risks in your workplace can be different to theirs.
You can use the guidance for higher-risk jobs and industries to help you to understand some of the hazards from specific work and what you can do to control risks.
Get competent advice
You must use someone competent to ensure the control measures you put in place are effective for your workplace. Because of the specialist skills, knowledge and experience needed to deal with the risks from exposure to dust, gases fumes and vapours, it's likely you'll need advice from someone outside your business.
More than one specialist may be required, for example a hygienist and an occupational health professional would be required to advise on LEV and health surveillance respectively.
Although you'll have to pay for a consultant or adviser, they can help ensure your workers are protected, and a healthy workforce could save you money.
If you install equipment to protect your workers' health, it must work effectively. Inadequate equipment can harm your workers and may be costly to replace. A consultant or adviser can advise you on:
- the most appropriate control equipment for your workplace and how to maintain it
- the appropriate controls for your industry
- which equipment suppliers to use
Remember, it's your legal responsibility as the employer to ensure the controls measures are effective, even if you get outside help.
How specialists can help
If you need help, find out how specialists can meet the needs of your business by providing services including:
- assessing risks across your business
- assessing specific risks
- implementing controls
- checking and maintaining controls
Before you get outside help, read the guidance about work-related lung disease and on health surveillance.
When you're clear on what help you need, you can find a consultant or adviser.
Assessing risks across your business
A specialist can:
- assess your work-related lung disease risks – including observing working practices to fully appreciate the risks, context and demands of a single task or multiple tasks
- prioritise your risks and provide advice on which risks are the most serious and need action sooner including:
- how the hierarchy of controls should apply in practice in your business
- control measures (including process changes, elimination, substitution, engineering controls, workplace organisation and equipment changes, and training needs and provision) and their cost effectiveness
- develop arrangements to design, implement, monitor and review control measures
- advise on:
- the selection, use and maintenance of control equipment
- holistic solutions including better use of equipment or providing more appropriate equipment
- the appropriate controls for your industry
- provide customised training
- identify and implement appropriate management actions to help you prevent lung disease
You should be prepared to:
- share your own risk assessments
- allow time for a competent person to observe working practices
- involve your workers and their representatives to ensure what you do to control the risks works
- identify and deliver changes in attitudes and behaviours to improve risk awareness and effective use of equipment
- invest in appropriate control equipment when the need is identified or recommended
Assessing specific risks
A specialist can:
- assess the likelihood of exposure from all routes (inhalation, ingestion, skin contact) this may involve measuring exposure and considering likely variations in exposure levels
- identify and rank the main sources of exposure
- assess how well any existing control measures are working, identifying any deficiencies and recommend improvements
You should be prepared to:
- share information about your processes
- allow time for a competent person to carry out an assessment of exposures
Implementing controls
A specialist can:
- design engineering control measures, for example to provide better containment of hazardous substances or design a (new) local exhaust ventilation (LEV) system to control exposure better or more reliably
- set measurable performance criteria that each LEV system should meet to control exposure adequately
- advise on appropriate process changes to give greater control of exposures
- carry out face-fit testing on workers that may need to wear filtering types of respiratory protective equipment (RPE)
- train workers to clean reusable RPE correctly
- train your workers on how, and why, to use the control measures
- advise if health surveillance is necessary for your workers and if so in what form, the process, including who interprets the results
You should be prepared to:
- share information about your processes
- allow time for a competent person to fully understand your processes
Checking and maintaining controls
A specialist can:
- advise if you need additional controls when significant changes are made to a process
- examine and test any local exhaust ventilation (LEV) systems as required by law
- examine and test all RPE (typically monthly)
- where appropriate, carry out regular health surveillance and medical examinations on workers
You should be prepared to:
- share information about your processes
- carry out any recommendations in the reports of the LEV examinations, or document your reasons for not doing so
Find a consultant or adviser
If you need the help of a consultant or adviser to prevent work-related lung disease, a good place to start is the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) website.
They are the chartered society for worker health protection and they publish a directory of qualified and experienced specialists.