Air quality and allergens at work: your rights

The bakery extractor is broken. The cleaner’s cupboard has no fresh air. Your chest tightens during a warehouse shift and eases on your days off. That calls for an investigation, not an instruction to toughen up. Handing you a mask does not settle the matter.

What to do about bad air today

1. Record the pattern. Note symptoms, dates, tasks, rooms and products, including whether symptoms improve away from work. Photograph dust, mould or blocked vents where safe.
2. Ask for the assessment and fix. Write to your manager and safety rep. Ask what the risk assessment says, whether COSHH applies and what controls are planned. If extraction is used, request its latest thorough examination and test record.
3. Name what you need now. A cleaner with asthma might ask to stop spraying in an unventilated room while safer arrangements are made. Request a response date. Keep messages somewhere you can access outside work.
4. Get support and medical advice. Tell your GP about the work and symptoms. Ask your union or safety rep to raise the risk with you. You need not diagnose occupational asthma yourself.
5. Report unresolved risks. Use HSE’s enforcing-authority guide. HSE covers factories, farms and construction. Councils cover many shops, restaurants, hotels, nurseries and care homes. Employer size is not the dividing line. In Northern Ireland, contact HSENI or the district council.

Fresh air is a legal duty

In Great Britain, regulation 6 of the Workplace Regulations 1992 requires effective and suitable ventilation with sufficient fresh or purified air. The wider duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 is to provide a working environment without risks to health so far as is reasonably practicable.

HSE’s Approved Code of Practice says fresh-air supply should not normally fall below 5 to 8 litres per second per occupant. This supports the legal duty; it is not a universal statutory minimum. At the lower end, eight people need 8 × 5 = 40 litres per second. That alone does not prove adequate ventilation. Air conditioning that only recirculates and cools air does not supply fresh air.

Employers must also keep a reasonable indoor temperature. HSE suggests at least 16°C, or 13°C for serious physical effort. There is no general legal maximum. See workplace temperature rules.

HSE’s CO₂ guidance uses the indicator above. Monitors do not measure dust, mould spores or fumes. They are less useful in large warehouses, sparsely occupied spaces or where a process produces CO₂.

Dust, fumes and allergens: the limits

COSHH, the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, governs hazardous-substance exposure. It covers flour, grain and wood dust, silica from stone cutting, welding fumes and cleaning chemicals. Respiratory sensitisers can cause allergies such as occupational asthma.

Outdoor pollen and pet hair on clothing will usually call for general risk assessment rather than COSHH. The source and work activity matter. Arguing about which regulation applies is no excuse to ignore symptoms.

Your employer must assess before exposure and prevent it where reasonably practicable, for example by replacing a dusty material or spray. Otherwise it must use engineering controls, such as extraction, and safe working methods. Respiratory protective equipment, or RPE, is the last resort, sometimes needed alongside other controls. Exposure monitoring and health surveillance are required where COSHH’s conditions are met, not automatically for every dusty job.

A limit is not a permission slip. Respiratory sensitiser and carcinogen exposure must also be reduced as low as is reasonably practicable. “We are below the limit” is not enough. These figures come from EH40; see HSE’s guidance on flour and wood dust.

Local exhaust ventilation, or LEV, must be maintained and tested. It captures the substance near its source and normally needs a competent person’s thorough examination and test at intervals no longer than 14 months. Specified processes need shorter intervals. Your employer must keep test records for at least five years. A missing record warrants questions, not an assumption that testing is overdue.

Which jobs this hits hardest

A baker needs dust captured at the mixer, not a fan blowing it across the room. Cleaners and kitchen staff need products and fumes assessed alongside ventilation. HSE lists flour among commonly reported occupational-asthma causes.

Warehouse risks include sweeping dust and vehicle exhaust. Care, nursery and NHS support staff may face mould, cleaning chemicals or latex exposure. Farm and food-factory workers can face grain dust and animal allergens. The assessment must cover your actual tasks, including the short dirty jobs between the main ones.

Asthma, hay fever and the Equality Act

In Great Britain, asthma or an allergy can be a disability under section 6 of the Equality Act 2010 if it has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities. A diagnosis alone does not decide it.

There is a specific exception for hay fever. Seasonal allergic rhinitis is excluded as an impairment, but can be taken into account where it aggravates another condition. Your employer’s safety duties still apply.

Reasonable adjustments might include changed products, duties or shifts, or redeployment away from a trigger. What is reasonable depends on the circumstances. Fixing unsafe extraction is already a safety duty, not a favour reserved for disabled staff.

Dismissal or demotion for disability-related absence can be discrimination arising from disability. The employer’s knowledge and any legal justification matter. See Acas’s disability-discrimination guidance.

The usual discrimination tribunal limit is three months less one day from the act complained of. Notify Acas for early conciliation within the applicable limit; conciliation affects the final deadline. An internal grievance does not stop the clock. Get advice on the calculation.

Masks and other protection: free, fitted, last resort

Required respirators must be suitable and free. Great Britain’s PPE duties were extended to “limb (b)” workers on 6 April 2022, and Northern Ireland’s through separate 2024 regulations. Genuinely self-employed status does not itself give entitlement to employer-provided PPE.

Match the equipment to the hazard. Tight-fitting respirators need face-fit testing for each wearer. Facial hair that breaks the seal means a suitable alternative is needed. FFP3 is used for some fine-dust work, not every fume or chemical.

For a broken extractor, ask what makes temporary arrangements safe and when repairs will happen. See your PPE rights.

Can you refuse, and can they punish you?

In Great Britain, section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 protects employees and other workers from detriment for leaving or refusing to return where they reasonably believe danger is serious and imminent and cannot reasonably be expected to avert it. It also protects appropriate steps to protect yourself or others from reasonably believed serious and imminent danger.

This is not a blanket right to refuse any task in a stuffy room. Record the danger and your response. Seek advice where you can, but do not delay getting away from danger to complete a complaints procedure.

Employees also have protection for reasonably raising harmful or potentially harmful circumstances where there is no safety rep or committee, or raising the matter through them is not reasonably practicable. Other routes protect designated safety activities and representative functions. These employee-specific routes do not cover every worker’s complaint.

Dismissal for qualifying safety reasons can be automatically unfair for employees under section 100, without minimum service. Lost shifts or worse rotas can be detriment where protection applies. Keep evidence and contact your union or Acas promptly. The usual tribunal limit is three months less one day, affected by early conciliation.

When an illness must be reported

GB RIDDOR rules require reporting of diagnosed occupational asthma where work involves significant or regular exposure to a known respiratory sensitiser. Dermatitis has its own exposure conditions. Give your employer the doctor’s diagnosis in writing. Occupational rhinitis is not on this GB list; symptoms alone do not trigger reporting.

A work-related diagnosis should prompt reassessment of controls, but does not itself prove a claim. See dismissal because of illness and sick leave rights.

Sick pay if bad air makes you ill

Since 6 April 2026, eligible employees receive Statutory Sick Pay, or SSP, without the old waiting days or lower earnings limit, from the first qualifying sick day they would normally work. You need not prove work caused the illness.

Weekly SSP is £123.25 or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. The 80% rule can apply even if earnings exceed £123.25. Part-week pay depends on qualifying days, not automatically seven calendar days.

Agency and zero-hours staff may qualify, but “worker” status for employment rights is not by itself an SSP entitlement. Genuinely self-employed people do not get SSP. Check the SSP guide for eligibility, qualifying days and evidence, and your contract for any more generous sick pay.

Agency, gig and migrant workers

Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 protects non-employees affected by the business, so far as is reasonably practicable. Both an agency and host can have duties. Your temporary contract does not excuse unsafe exposure.

Status matters for PPE, SSP and retaliation claims. See agency-worker rights or check your status. If shifts or a sponsored job are threatened, get advice before agreeing to changes or resigning.

Try your safety rep or sector union. BFAWU represents baking and food workers; Unite, UNISON and GMB organise across many jobs covered here. Acas, Citizens Advice and law centres are further advice routes. Consider raising a shared risk together.

What has changed, and what has not

The April 2026 SSP changes and Great Britain’s PPE extension are in force. Existing safety duties apply now. Do not wait for promised reforms to report a risk or challenge retaliation. Our Employment Rights Act 2025 guide distinguishes current rights from scheduled changes.