Compensating occupational asthma.

Early in 1982, occupational asthma will become a prescribed disease in Britain under the terms of the Social Security Act (1975).1 This is important legislation because occupational asthma is becoming increasingly common as society uses more and more respirable reactive chemicals in its industries. At the same time pneumoconiosis is becoming less common, and it is likely that it will soon give way to asthma as the most frequently compensated occupational disease of the lungs.