Background: In France, few data are available on epidemiological surveillance of occupational asthma (OA). This is why the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance, in collaboration with the Société de pneumologie de langue française and the Société française de médecine du travail, set up the ONAPII project in 2008. Aim: to estimate the incidence of OA in 6 French departments, according to economic activity and occupations. Material and methods: Data collection was based on a network of chest physicians and university hospital physicians specialized in occupational diseases. Reporting forms completed were examined by experts to establish the likelihood of OA diagnosis and of the causal link with an agent mentioned by the physicians. Results: In all 6 departments for the period 2008-2011, 330 cases were reported corresponding to a mean annual incidence rate of 36 per million. The age-standardized incidence rate was higher in women (43/million) than in men (29/million). For occupational categories, the estimated age and sex-standardized incidence rates were high among skilled or unskilled workers (116/million), farmers (97/million) and self-employed workers (45/million). For economic activity, high incidence rates were observed in "manufacture of food products/beverage" (279/million) and "agriculture, forestry and fishing" (160/million). Analyses by causal agents showed that flours were always the first cause (20%) but quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) became the second (15%) underlining increasing importance of cleaning agents as etiologic factor of OA.
Blay et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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