Training material

a. Education for employers

• Leaflets and information
• HSE’s Respiratory sensitisers and COSHH: breathe freely, a leaflet for employers on preventing occupational asthma
• Asthma at work – your charter, produced by Asthma UK, sets out 10 recommendations to reduce the impact of asthma at work
• Occupational asthma, a review paper by Mapp et al. (2005) in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Although aimed primarily at physicians, the paper is comprehensive, covering definitions, causes, prevention and surveillance
• Evidence based guidelines for the prevention, identification, and management of occupational asthma, a paper by Nicholson et al. (2005) in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (you have to register to download this paper)
• A guide to the management of occupational asthma, published by the New Zealand Occupational Safety and Health Service
• Occupational asthma: a guide for employers, workers and their representatives, produced by the British Occupational Health Research Foundation
• HSE’s health surveillance for occupational asthma
• HSE’s asthmagens inspection pack
• HSE’s further reading on its asthma web page provides links to information, leaflets and priced publications for bakers, vehicle sprayers, solderers, woodworkers, healthcare workers, agriculture workers, engineering workers and those working with laboratory
• Respiratory protective equipment at work a priced publication from the HSE
• British guidelines on the management of asthma, aimed primarily at medical professionals, produced by the British Thoracic Society and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN). Chapter 8 deals with occupational asthma and annex 10 with work-related asthma and rhinitis. You can access these sections individually on SIGN’s British guideline on the management of asthma web page
• HSE’s Legionnaires’ disease: a guide for employers
• HSE’s COSHH essentials web pages have a series of leaflets relating to various industries and occupations, including agriculture, construction, machining and metalworking fluids, manufacturing, printers, quarries, stonemasons and welding
• HSE’s COSHH essentials offers guidance documents on a number of relevant issues, including health surveillance for occupational asthma, health monitoring for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, health surveillance for those exposed to respirable crystalline silica, new and existing engineering control systems and exposure measurement: air sampling
• HSE’s Good health is good business: employers’ guide
• Rehabilitation and you - a guide to rehabilitation services in Scotland
• Web links
• Asthma UK
• British Occupational Hygiene Society
• HSE’s asthma pages
• HSE’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) pages
• The Institute of Occupational Medicine’s Sickness Absence Recording Tool occupational asthma pages
• The HSE’s COSHH essentials website offers advice on controlling the use of chemicals and was developed to help firms comply with the COSHH Regulations
• The Health, Environment and Work site provides an extensive educational resource that covers topics such as asbestos and disease, occupational cancer, occupational and environmental lung disease and occupational asthma
• The Haz-Map site has a database of hazardous chemicals and occupational diseases, including pages on occupational asthma, agents causing chronic bronchitis and COPD, pneumoconiosis, occupational cancer and inhalation fever
• DEFRA’s avian influenza pages
• Patient UK’s occupational asthma page
• The International Programme on Chemical Safety offers access to internationally peer reviewed information on chemical risks and how to manage them
• The International Agency for Research on Cancer has monographs on agents that can cause occupational cancers. You can only get summaries and evaluations on the site – the full monographs are available as priced publications
• HSE’s Control of Substances Hazardous to Health web page
• NHS Plus and NHS Direct
• Health and well-being self check tool - Investors in People Standard
• Case studies
• HSE studies on asthma and COPD
• Health, Environment and Work study of an animal house technician with skin rashes and respiratory symptoms
• PowerPoint slides

The presentation ‘Inhalation disorders: training for managers’ can be used for training purposes. First ‘save’ the document, then press ctrl+L to run as a presentation. Use the ‘page up’ and ‘page down’ keys to move through the slides. You can use the editable ‘supplementary slide’ to tailor the material to a particular organisation.

b. Education for employees

• Leaflets and information

• HSE’s Breathe freely: a workers’ information card on occupational asthma
• Factsheets from the Sheffield Occupational Health Advisory Service on occupational asthma and work-related cancer
• Asthma UK’s Asthma at work – your charter sets out 10 recommendations to reduce the impact of asthma in the workplace and provides information on the triggers and symptoms to look out for

• Web links

• Information on occupational asthma and asthma at work from Asthma UK
• British Lung Foundation on living with occupational lung disease, occupational lung disease, asthma, allergy, COPD, extrinsic allergic alveolitis, asbestos, lung cancer and mesothelioma
• Questions workers ask about asthma from the HSE
• Information on COPD from Patient UK
• NHS Direct

• PowerPoint slides

The presentation ‘Inhalation disorders: training for employees' can be used for training purposes. First ‘save’ the document, then press ctrl+L to run as a presentation. Use the ‘page up’ and ‘page down’ keys to move through the slides. You can use the editable ‘supplementary slide’ to tailor the material to a particular organisation.