Preventing Occupational Lung Disease 

Occupational lung diseases are the deadly consequence of operating in a working environment that’s historically been ill-equipped to protect workers from the realities of exposure to dangerous dust.

Occupational lung disease contributes to a staggering 12,000 deaths every single year in the UK, alone. Notably, these deaths were caused by past working conditions. Due to the long latency period for many occupational lung diseases, workers may not begin to experience symptoms until they’ve been out of employment for months, years, or even decades. And this unique attribute of occupational lung disease presents its own set of challenges, making such diseases particularly difficult to effectively address.

In this article, we’ll review the basics of occupational lung disease and explore the unique challenges that these conditions pose to organisations when it comes to effective risk management. Then, we’ll dive into the ways that personal dust monitoring technology can enhance your compliance efforts, streamline your ways of working, and help promote better health and safety outcomes across your workforce with regard to occupational lung disease.

The unique challenges of fighting a microscopic, unpredictable threat to worker health and safety

Occupational lung diseases present a unique challenge to organisations when it comes to risk management. Not only is dangerous dust often invisible, but the latency period for occupational lung diseases means that most workers won’t experience symptoms until well after they’ve been exposed to harmful levels of dust at work.

Taken together, this means that the end-to-end experience of a worker being exposed to - and negatively impacted by - harmful levels or types of dust at work can happen without anyone ever knowing. But the real problem isn’t that exposure could occur without someone knowing, it’s that it often does.

According to a report by the HSE, over the last three years there have been over 150,000 new or long standing cases of “breathing or lung problems” among individuals who had ever worked (as opposed to individuals who had worked in the previous year). When faced with such shocking statistics, it’s crucial to ask the right questions and uncover why the occupational health and safety landscape with regard to dust is so challenging to manage, and to better understand why this problem requires a purpose-built solution.

Why is exposure to risk from workplace dust so challenging to monitor and manage?

In the first instance, dust is an often invisible threat to worker health and safety. Dust particles are microscopic, but even when dust is visible it’s incredibly difficult to control effectively. This is partly because dust - especially dangerous silica dust, which is known as the biggest risk to construction workers after asbestos - is everywhere. Silica itself is a common mineral that’s found in stone, rock, sand, gravel, and clay, and silica dust is nearly impossible to avoid on worksites, where it’s frequently created from working with bricks, mortar, tiles, or even simply sweeping.

In addition to the inherent difficulties that accompany combatting a microscopic and pervasive workplace threat, there’s another reason why it’s so difficult to effectively monitor and manage a team’s exposure to dangerous dust at work, and it has to do with how people respond to the type and amount of dust that they inhale or become exposed to.

Every individual will react differently when exposed to dust, and it’s difficult to determine what dust - or how much - will cause which problems in a given person. And this makes it particularly difficult to effectively apply a sweeping health surveillance or risk management programme with regard to dust.

How do traditional risk assessments fall short of adequately addressing dust at work?

Traditional risk assessments are, essentially, snapshots of a work environment. While they can be an effective way of understanding the baseline amount or type of risk to which your workers are exposed, they fall short of giving you control of your workplace risk environment on an on-going basis. Such assessments simply cannot fully capture the truly dynamic nature of workplaces, and the people who operate within them.

And because snapshot-style risk assessments aren’t really representative of your workplace risk environment, they can’t reliably assess the actual threat posed to workers by dust on day-to-day basis.

Eliminate guesswork from your risk management equation with personalised dust monitoring

Historically, teams have relied primarily upon RPE and PPE and certain workplace practices to protect against exposure to risk from dangerous dust. Most commonly, workers are required to wear masks and ensure adequate ventilation, extraction, and/or wet processes (such as wet sweeping to collect silica dust) when working in an environment where dust is present.

And while disciplined, safety-focussed teams remain dedicated to utilising best practices and enforcing the use of protective equipment to protect workers from exposure to dangerous dust, statistics that highlight the thousands of workers with both new and longstanding occupational lung diseases tell us that these measures have never been enough.

To truly and effectively monitor and manage your workers’ exposure to risk from dangerous dust in a dynamic workplace, teams must consider a more modern solution. One that’s capable of delivering the insight required to overcome the unique challenges associated with protecting workers from occupational lung diseases.

Taking control and protecting your workforce with a connected Trolex XD1+

Personal dust monitoring technology is purpose-built to overcome these challenges, and give teams exactly what they need to most effectively protect their workers, and go beyond bare regulatory compliance. Instead of depending exclusively upon traditional risk assessments to help guide your teams through a dangerous workplace environment, modern technologies provide a sophisticated, powerful, and most importantly, reliable tool that workers, duty holders, and safety managers can use to more confidently navigate a complex and dynamic risk landscape with regard to dust.

The Trolex XD1+ tells workers exactly when they are in danger of hazardous dust exposure. And it does so without interrupting business-as-usual. The Trolex XD1+ is lightweight, truly wearable kit that’s designed to protect the health and safety of workers without slowing them down or distracting them from the task at hand. And unlike traditional risk assessments, which can only provide recommendations based upon a brief snapshot of your risk environment, the Trolex XD1+ is continuously monitoring for a range of dust sizes, including PM1, PM2.5, PM4.25 and PM10. This means that your workers are always protected from the types and amounts of dust that may appear on your worksite on any given day, during any given task.

With real-time alerts to notify workers when they’re in danger, the Trolex XD1+ offers your team something that a traditional approach to dust monitoring and management never could: complete control over your risk environment. Plus, the control to meaningfully address dangerous dust in your workplace will be put in the hands of the line managers and duty holders who are best-positioned to take swift or course-correcting action when needed.

Instantly transform your most valuable workplace data into actionable, attractive information that you can use to refine your controls, improve your ways of working, and drive better health and safety outcomes for your workers.

When you connect your Trolex XD1+ with your Reactec ecosystem, your personal dust monitor is instantly transformed into a connected device that seamlessly delivers invaluable, real-time insights across your team. Not only will you have unprecedented access to personalised information about workers’ exposure to dust (regardless of how far from their location you are), you’ll also gain the benefits of GPS tracking data that will clearly show you where high-dust environments exist in your workplace.

And when it comes to getting the absolute most out of your dust monitoring efforts, a connected XD1+ offers access to real-time information whenever you need it, and in-depth Analytics are available through Reactec’s industry-defining cloud-based Analytics platform. Without any need for IT intervention or additional resource, the data collected by the XD1+ is automatically collected and collated by Reactec’s Analytics, which instantly transform your most valuable workplace data into actionable, attractive information that you can use to refine your controls, improve your ways of working, and ultimately drive better health and safety outcomes for your workers.

Occupational lung diseases are the deadly consequence of operating in a working environment that’s historically been ill-equipped to protect workers from the realities of exposure to dangerous dust.

To ensure that your workforce is truly protected from all types and amounts of potentially dangerous dust, teams must consider a modern solution that’s not only incredibly accurate, but which also delivers life-saving insights when they matter: in real-time.

To learn more about how exposure to harmful dust can impact your team, and what you can do to start taking better control of you risk environment, you can review this information.

And when you’re ready to learn more about how a connected Trolex XD1+ works seamlessly with the Reactec Analytics platform, you can explore this page.