Asbestos is a particularly deadly form of air pollution. Each year, 4,000 people die because they inhaled asbestos fibres at some point during the past. According to the Health and Safety Executive, which oversees legislation on asbestos every week, asbestos claims the lives of:

• Four plumbers
• 20 tradesmen
• Six electricians
• Eight joiners.

Asbestos fibres penetrate the lung and are responsible for:

• Mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs which is always fatal and is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos
• Asbestos-related lung cancer, which is often fatal
• Asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs which is not necessarily fatal but is very debilitating
• Diffuse pleural thickening, which is a thickening of the membrane surrounding the lungs. This causes breathlessness by restricting expansion of the lungs. 

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A new study suggests that exposure to chemical pollution could be a particular problem in the office environment. Researchers in the United States have found a link between polyfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in the air of a number of offices and their presence in the blood of the people working there. 

Polyfluorinated compounds are water and stain-resistant and they have been used for many years, for this reason, in a variety of everyday applications. These include:

• Non-stick cookware
• Windshield wash
• Carpet and furniture stain-protectant coating
• Food-contact paper coatings.

Because PFCs are also very resistant to degradation by heat and chemicals (which, of course, also makes them useful in their various applications), they do tend to accumulate in the environment. Their presence has long been noted in the air, water, wildlife, and the human body. 

Does this matter?

There has been a revolution in awareness of chemical contamination in research laboratories. I could tell you several 'horror stories' of casual exposure to mercury vapour, benzene and chromic acid (the ultimate glassware cleaning agent) among innocent biomedical PhD students (including myself) in the 1970s. But researchers in hospital, and other, laboratories can never afford to be complacent about exposure to chemicals, because there are so many different substances involved – and we still do not know too much about the long-term health effects of so many of them. 

Chemicals used in the clinical research environment may be:

• Toxic
• Corrosive
• Reactive
• Flammable
• Radioactive.

There could be hundreds of different chemicals used in the hospital research lab – some, like methanol, in

Cleaning products in the workplace, such as bleach and formaldehyde, can cause health problems including asthma symptoms. A new study from researchers in the United States and Spain now reveals that keeping hospitals clean is exacting a toll on the lung health of the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who work there. Exposure to products used to clean surfaces and sterilise hospital equipment are linked to asthma symptoms, the researchers say. More should be done to ensure adherence to guidelines for exposure to cleaning products in the hospital environment.

The study asked 3,600 health care professionals (doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and occupational therapists) based in Texas about their experience of work-related asthma symptoms, work-exacerbated asthma, and

There have long been complaints from airline staff about ill health caused by poor cabin air quality. But, according to the Department of Transport cabin air quality is usually lower than the air pollution in office buildings for example. A study by the governments Committee on Toxicity was inconclusive on a link between cabin air quality and pilot health. Since, unless you are a very frequent flyer, the pilot's exposure to cabin air pollution would far outweigh that of the passenger, maybe this is reassuring. There have certainly been very few formal passenger complaints on the impact of cabin air pollution on health – just 244 out of 48,000 complaints in the last ten years, according to the Air Transport Users Council.  

In modern aircraft, your cabin air comes from the environmental control system which

People who work with poultry often report a wide range of respiratory symptoms including cough, eye irritation, breathlessness, chest tightness, nasal congestion and wheezing. Agricultural workers in general tend to have a much higher incidence of occupational asthma than the national average and poultry workers seem to be particularly at risk. The longer someone has worked in a poultry farm, the more likely they are to develop chronic respiratory problems. Workers in cage-housed facilities seem to have more problems than those in floor-housed facilities.

This is hardly surprising, for they are exposed to a potent and complex mix of toxins and allergens in the form of poultry dust. The evidence that components of poultry dust are harmful to health is so strong that it is listed in Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations.

The various activities that go on in a poultry farm, including handling and

Modern medicine and an aging population have combined to increase the frequency of invasive fungal infection. We are surrounded by microbes, including fungi. They live in the surrounding air, on our skin, and inside our bodies. In a healthy person, these fungi often do not cause any problems. But everyone with a lowered immunity, such as the elderly, patients with cancer or HIV/AIDS, and those who have had an organ transplant or who are on chemotherapy, are prey to all kinds of microbial infections (sometimes called opportunistic infections). The risk is even further increased if the patient is in intensive care, because procedures like mechanical ventilation and the use of catheters tend to increase the risk of infection.

Invasive aspergillosis (IA) is infection by the common fungus Aspergillus and it is a leading cause of death

There are hundreds of chemicals in use in the workplace that create air pollution and can harm your health. You might come across this air pollution in the form of dust, fibres, fumes or liquids. Industrial chemicals most often cause harm by inhalation or skin contact and the damage to your health can be immediate (a splash of acid causing a skin burn, for instance) or long term (mesothelioma - the deadly cancer caused by breathing in asbestos fibres). It is therefore important to know how to protect people from respiratory, and other, hazards, in the workplace. In the UK, we have workplace exposure limits (WELs) which are set under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations. WELs are concentrations of hazardous substances in the air (measuring in milligrams per cubic metre or parts per million) beyond which the employee should not be exposed. WELs are averaged over a period of time and both long term (eight hours) and short term (15 minute) exposures