TY - JOUR T1 - How “clean” is the cleaning profession? JF - Occupational and Environmental Medicine JO - Occup Environ Med SP - 586 LP - 587 DO - 10.1136/oem.2005.020701 VL - 62 IS - 9 AU - P K Henneberger Y1 - 2005/09/01 UR - http://oem.bmj.com/content/62/9/586.abstract N2 - Commentary on the paper by Medina-Ramón et al (see page 598) Based on the assumption that cleanliness equates with healthiness, many people are likely to consider the cleaning profession to be relatively free of health risks. In fact, some cleaning compounds, either alone or mixed, pose a risk for inhalation injuries, and this risk is heightened when cleaners work in a confined space, such as a small lavatory. The harmful agents are usually irritant aerosols or gases, which means that cleaners are at risk for irritant induced asthma, including reactive airways dysfunction syndrome (RADS), and other respiratory diseases. Over the past 15 years, professional cleaners have emerged as one of the high risk groups for work related asthma in industrialised nations. For example, in the multinational European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) that was initiated in 1992, the reference occupational group comprised professional, clerical, and administrative workers. The cleaning occupation had the fourth highest odds ratio (OR = 1.97, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.33 to 2.92) for asthma among 29 occupational groups, and cleaners had an increased odds ratio in 11 of the 12 countries where the survey was conducted.1 Epidemiologists in Finland, France, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the United States have also published reports that identified an association between asthma and professional cleaning. Most of these studies implicate employment as a cleaner or the use of cleaning compounds in general as … ER -