We may not always want to go to work, but we all expect that it's a safe place to go to, and forthcoming legislation aimed at harmonising Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) laws is intended to achieve just that.

But the workplace can never be entirely safe. According to Safe Work Australia, over 135,000 Australians are seriously injured at work every year and more than 260 die as a result of work-related injury. The total economic cost for 2005-2006 alone is estimated at $57.5bn.

The harmonised approach, coming into force early next year, is all about assessing and managing risk, and for employers to demonstrate that all reasonable and practical steps are taken to fulfil their primary duty of care for worker safety.

Guidance to the new legislation states: "To identify what is or was reasonably practicable all of the relevant matters must be taken into account and weighed up and a balance achieved that will provide the highest level of protection that is both possible and reasonable in the circumstances."

But there's one aspect of workplace safety that can be easily overlooked because, although it's all around us, we can't see it. Yet the quality of indoor air, the air that we breathe, is of paramount importance because one manifestation of poor quality air is occupational asthma.

It's caused by exposure to airborne substances known as asthmagens. Well over 200 respiratory sensitisers have already been classified and others are being identified all the time.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that between 9-15% of all adult-onset cases of asthma can be attributable to exposures at work. Based on research in Australia and elsewhere, there may be as many as 1,000-3,000 new cases of occupational asthma every year in Australia.

That's bad news, as the Australian Lung Foundation simply states: "Once occupational asthma is diagnosed, it is invariably necessary to move to another job or another area to avoid exposure to the causative agent."

That's a lot of people who are being affected every year, and it's therefore unsurprising that the condition is responsible for a great deal of personal and family disruption and economic hardship. (Occupational asthma is new-onset asthma, not work-aggravated asthma where the individual already suffers from the condition).

Among the most common causes of occupational asthma in Australia are wood dust from trees such as the Western red cedar, isocyanates (used in polyurethane products), paint fumes, solvents, latex and flour. Manufacturing and health/community services are the workplaces at highest risk, but such is the range of asthmagens that many workplaces can be affected.

Plan of attack

So what can be done? Well, at the pre-employment stage, prospective employees should be asked about any pre-existing asthma, and whether they could be sensitive to substances in the workplace. If yes, that would provide grounds for not selecting that person. However - and it is a big but - a previous history of asthma is not significantly associated with occupational asthma, so employers should be careful.

Across the world, the incidence of asthma is on the increase as more people adopt western lifestyles and become exposed to greater numbers of asthmagens. Internationally, there are an estimated 300 million asthma sufferers and, according to the World Health Organisation, some 250,000 people died from asthma worldwide in 2005 alone.

In Australia, in 2008, 449 people died from asthma, according to the National Asthma Council of Australia. It notes that some two million Australians have diagnosed asthma - roughly one in 10 adults. The Council also makes the important point that Australians spend some 90% of their time indoors - so indoor air quality is of significant importance.

It's the reason why health and safety regulations relating to indoor air quality have become increasingly stringent across the developed and developing world, with sufferers of occupational asthma having greater access to legal redress and financial compensation from their employers. For today's employers, it's about recognizing and dealing with the problem because many jurisdictions now make it unlawful in codes of employment to discriminate against asthmatics.

Preventative measures

However, damage to individual employees could be greatly reduced and costs for employers largely avoided by adopting appropriate preventative and control strategies, and by the early identification of individuals within the workplace suffering from pre-existing asthma or potentially suffering from occupational asthma.

Prevention and control starts with a workplace assessment to identify potential asthmagens and, thereafter, an exchange of views between the employer, employees and workplace health and safety professionals on appropriate strategies to minimize or eliminate exposure - for example, installing a better ventilation system or placing dangerous chemicals in a fume cupboard. At its simplest, apart from an absolute ban on indoor smoking, dust, chemicals, perfumes and air fresheners are the most likely to cause problems - and those can be easily addressed.

Some employers now have guidelines to ensure their own offices are safe for asthma sufferers - for example, asking staff not to wear perfume or aftershave at work, to use unscented soaps, deodorants and hair products and not to smoke immediately before coming into the office. Those guidelines also require non-volatile cleaning products and unscented air fresheners to be used.

However, in those instances where a significant risk is identified, continued health surveillance might also be required, involving a programme of spirometry [lung function] testing, to detect early indications of disease and provide appropriate medical advice to individual employees.

Early detection is important in occupational asthma, because people spend so much time at work - one estimate suggests that a person in a full-time office job will spend up to 1,800 hours a year in their office - that they will have had extensive exposure to their trigger by the time their symptoms become apparent and a diagnosis of asthma is made.

Put starkly, the more time you spend exposed to your asthmagen, the more likely you are to have permanent lung inflammation and airway hypersensitivity. That's why it's important for employees to raise issues of indoor air quality or, more pertinently about occupational asthma, at the earliest opportunity. For existing sufferers from asthma, it's equally important that their employer and colleagues know about their condition, what triggers it, and what to do if they have an asthma attack.

But while it's impossible to protect all employees from all possible asthmagens, the growing importance of work-related asthma with its associated duty of care from employers, means that the role of health and safety and personnel professionals continues to change - not only in monitoring indoor air quality but in providing the best possible overall environment for staff.

That environment starts from the floor because, among others, the German asthma foundation (DAAB) has for some time advised that the harmful effects of particulate matter can be greatly reduced if carpeting is chosen over hard flooring options.

At Desso, we've gone a step further by introducing a carpet type that is eight times more effective in capturing and retaining fine dust than hard flooring - and four times more effective than standard carpeting.* It works by reducing the incidence of potentially harmful allergy-producing particles by safely trapping and immobilising them, guarantees a significant improvement in indoor air quality, and therefore reduces the risk of health-related problems.

AirMaster® was developed to improve indoor air quality in busy interior environments such as schools, hospitals and offices - anywhere where there is a lot of feet treading in dust or other particulate matter and then, when inside, stirring it up into the breathing zone.

It might seem an unusual weapon in the battle for better air quality, but it's been extremely well received internationally by health and safety and personnel professionals who not only recognise the regulatory responsibilities on maintaining good indoor air quality, but the potential legal and other penalties if they don't.

What's on the floor might not be a complete solution to occupational asthma, but it can help considerably.

*Independent tests were carried out by GUI, the German test institute, and based on AirMaster® performance against standard PVC hard flooring and standard structured loop pile carpet. GUI specialises in assessing air quality, dampness and dust particle count.