Workplaces - National Asthma Public Policy Agenda

Supporting Strategies:

• Identify work processes that expose workers to substances that cause or make asthma worse and control these exposures by eliminating their use, substituting safer substances and employing engineering controls (such as ventilation).
• Establish 100 percent tobacco-free workplaces, including e-cigarettes. 
• Implement fragrance-free policies.   
• Provide tobacco cessation programs. 
• Adopt cleaner equipment (e.g., loaders, tractors) or vehicle technology (e.g., transition to zero-emissions technology).

Supporting Strategies:

• Establish a surveillance system for work-related asthma using data from healthcare providers, clinics, emergency departments, hospitals, workers’ compensation databases and poison control centers. 
• Promote interventions that investigate and reduce exposures associated with work-related asthma.

Supporting Strategies:

• National guidelines should be implemented by healthcare providers to assess work-related asthma and should include education and clinical decision support tools.
• Healthcare providers should ask their adult asthma patients about their workplace, positions and job tasks, including associated exposures and timing of symptoms.