UNITE Health and Safety
n By Helen Armstrong
Latest on workers’ safety news DANGER FROM DUST There’s something in the air…
HSE (the Health and Safety Executive) in the 1990s determined that occupational asthma, caused by chemicals or common natural substances, was now a major cause of work-related respiratory illness, largely replacing bronchitis and byssinosis.
Once sensitised to irritants, lungs can also react to changes including cold air and stress. The key to tackling work- related asthma is identifying substances and situations causing sensitisation, and controlling them.
The chief agricultural irritant is dust, mainly from grain or poultry.
Asthma’s underlying causes vary and are still being researched. Symptoms can differ (eg coughing asthma, only recognized quite recently), but the problems arising – interference with breathing, sometimes life-threatening - occur across the condition.
Relatively little is known about how much dust exposure triggers asthma. It may take longer than chemical exposure, but is just as damaging.
Even before processing, threshed grains contain various particles and substances, including husks, weedkillers, pesticides, insect fragments and faeces, bird and rodent droppings, bacteria, fungi and other natural and chemical substances. Storing grain and animal feeds picks up other particles, such as mites and weevils. Damp grain can produce moulds and bacteria, causing Farmer’s Lung, an inflammation treatable in early stages, but chronic and life- threatening if left.
Grain dust is a ‘respiratory sensitiser’, damaging lung linings so that allergic reactions can occur later after minor exposure. Long term this can cause asthma and/or bronchitis, leading to COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which can be disabling.
Grain fever (organic dust toxic syndrome) causes temporary flu-like symptoms, which normally clears up quickly but, if repeated, can become chronic.
HSE guidance COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) (
www.hse.gov.uk/coshh/) requires employers (including self-employed people and contractors) to make a full risk assessment of all potential exposure, who may be exposed, for how long, how the grain will be handled, and what substances (eg pesticides) may be present. Exposure times should be limited as far as practicable.
Visible dust in the air, or settled on surfaces, is a sign that action is needed, as the most dangerous dust particles are too fine to see.
It is important to share the results of risk assessments with employees and safety representatives (who can also help identify risks). Employers should survey employees, before employment and at intervals thereafter, to understand any lung conditions, and involve a medical occupational health professional to train the Responsible Person.
Guidance shows that, although there are many industries which must
32 uniteLANDWORKER Autumn 2023
manage grain dust, farming is involved in the majority of them, including cleaning tasks, which may be overlooked.
Poultry dust includes everything from wood dust to dander, waste and other organisms like bacteria and mites. Again the dust can harm all parts of the respiratory system, leading to illnesses from sore throat to chronic occupational asthma.
There are strict rules for controlling exposure where it is not ‘reasonably practicable’ to prevent it. These are laid out in Schedule 2A of the COSHH Regulations.
Good practice includes attention to the working environment (eg ventilation), systems of work to minimise exposure, and individual behaviour. Respirators may at times be necessary, but as with grain dust, these should only be used as a last line of protection, in addition to good environmental and process practice.
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Safety reps should ask for copies of the employer’s risk assessments to make sure they are preventing exposure to asthma-causing substances
Rob Miguel
Unite National health and safety adviser
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