Welcome Guest! The IOSH forums are a free resource to both members and non-members. Login or register to use them

Postings made by forum users are personal opinions. IOSH is not responsible for the content or accuracy of any of the information contained in forum postings. Please carefully consider any advice you receive.

Notification

Icon
Error

Options
Go to last post Go to first unread
lisar  
#1 Posted : 28 May 2013 14:53:16(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
lisar

An employee has some allergies and they seem to affect him when he is at work. He have ruled out everything else that He is in contact with only at work – food, drink etc, He believes that sitting underneath the aircon unit is affecting him, gives him asthma type systems and some other symptoms. Has anyone ever experienced anything similar to this situation? Would you just go through HR? We dont have occupational health
biker1  
#2 Posted : 28 May 2013 15:15:21(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
biker1

If this person is sitting directly in the line of fire of the aircon, perhaps the temperature and flow of the air is aggravating a pre-existing tendency towards asthma. It could also depend on the proportion of fresh air taken into the system, a larger part of the air in any such system being recycled. Try moving desk and see if that makes any difference, if not then occupational health may need to be involved to assess air quality. You do not say if anyone else there is similarly affected.
leadbelly  
#3 Posted : 28 May 2013 15:21:07(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
leadbelly

lisar Is the system cleaned out regularly? If it has been colonised by some types of fungi, asthma-like symptoms can result. Use your favourite search engine to look up farmer's lung or mushroom-picker's lung. LB
chris42  
#4 Posted : 28 May 2013 15:32:03(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
chris42

Where I worked previously we had issues like this. It seemed to be a combination of both the above issues plus when we brought someone in to test the air, we found that during the cold weather windows and doors were kept firmly shut and actually resulted in a high CO2 environment. One person we just needed to move to another desk in the room (drying out of mouth and throat), but another we had to actually move to another room. Opening windows on a cold day is always good fun. The offices were very old and wooden construction, god knows what was living in the cavities, we spent loads of money trying to find out. Even had all the movable partitions cleaned (you know the sort 4 feet high and covered in material). Eventually a new set of offices with their own unique issues came along.
chris.packham  
#5 Posted : 28 May 2013 16:22:33(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
chris.packham

I suggest you check the relative humidity of the air from the air conditioning unit and in the office in general. When we carried out a study on a large number of office workers for a skin care product manufacturer we found that in general workers in air conditioned offices tended to have drier skin than those in offices without air conditioning. Additionally, in one food processing plant where there was a significant occupational skin problem we found that one of the contributory factors was the low humidity as a result of the air conditioning maintaining a very low (food safe) environment. Humidification helped to solve the skin issues. You might find moving your employee to a location with a higher RH resolves your problem. Chris
Users browsing this topic
Guest
You cannot post new topics in this forum.
You cannot reply to topics in this forum.
You cannot delete your posts in this forum.
You cannot edit your posts in this forum.
You cannot create polls in this forum.
You cannot vote in polls in this forum.