occupational disease

occupational disease
a disease to which workers in certain occupations are particularly prone. Industrial diseases, associated with a particular industry or group of industries, fall within this category.

Examples of such diseases include the various forms of pneumoconiosis, which affect the lungs of workers continually exposed to dusty atmospheres; cataracts in glassblowers; decompression sickness in divers; poisoning from toxic metals in factory and other workers; and infectious diseases contracted from animals by farm workers, such as woolsorter’s disease (see anthrax). See also coshh, prescribed disease, industrial injuries disablement benefit.

pneumoconiosis
n.
a group of lung diseases caused by inhaling dust. The dust particles must be less than 0.5 μm in diameter to reach the depths of the lung and there is usually a long period after initial exposure before shadows appear on the chest X-ray and breathlessness develops. In practice industrial exposure to coal dust (see coal-worker’s pneumoconiosis), silica (see silicosis), and asbestos (see asbestosis) produces most of the cases of pneumoconiosis. In Britain such cases are examined by the Medical Boarding Centres (Respiratory Diseases), on whose advice statutory compensation for industrial injury may be awarded.