SAFETY SATURDAY: AIR QUALITY

Will you remember the famous men who had to fall and then rise again?

So take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again

- Pick Yourself Up, by Frank Sinatra

Humans are mammals, and thus require oxygen to stay alive. The primary means of cellular respiration in humans is driven by oxidative phosphorylation, wherein oxygen plays a crucial role in allowing the cells of mammalian tissue to metabolise the necessary energy compounds required by the body. In the absence of oxygen, as when oxygen is deprived by restricting airflow by constricting the airways, where the effectiveness of the transfer of oxygen into the bloodstream is impacted by physiological changes in the lungs, the heart, or the tissues themselves, and when the oxygen that would otherwise drive the necessary cellular processes of the body is inhibited from binding with the cells that take it to where it needs to go because of competition with other chemical compounds like carbon dioxide, irreversible tissue damage can rapidly occur. Hypoxia can result from an impaired oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood (eg, anemia), impaired unloading of oxygen from hemoglobin in target tissues (eg, carbon monoxide toxicity), or from a restriction of blood supply. Oxygen is delivered to tissues by the lungs, heart, bloodstream, blood vessels, and the membranes of tissues themselves. Oxygen is delivered to lungs through mechanical respiration, wherein the action of the diaphragm applies traction to the lungs, creating a vacuum, and drawing air in through the nose and mouth (Beachey, 2022). In drawing in oxygen, the process of respiration can introduce other matter into the lungs aside from oxygenated air. Dust, fumes, vapours, mists, smoke, bacteria, and other aerosolised matter can be drawn into the lungs and airways (Yasmeen & Hafeez, 2023) if the air a person breaths is contaminated or untreated.

Air quality is a matter of ongoing and existential concern. The quality of air a person breathes does not only affect their immediate physiological function; the continued and uncontrolled inspiration of chemicals, toxicants, and pollutants over the lifespan can increase the incidence of a number of diseases (Mathieu-Nolf, 2002). The World Health Organisation has determined that the specific disease outcomes most strongly linked with exposure to air pollution include stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, pneumonia, and cataracts, when considering household air pollution only (World Health Organisation, n.d.). However, this only considers the home environment. While household air pollution can be affected by a number of factors such as proximity to roads (Lawson et. al., 2011), zoning of residential areas close to industry (Mannan & Al-Ghamdi, 2021), whether the residential area is downstream of pollutant sources whose concentration of toxicants in the air volume may be influenced by distribution (Vardoulakis et. al., 2020), the occupational environment still warrants consideration. Workers, by virtue of the placement of their work, are obliged to complete their duties of work and tasks in stereotyped and spatially consistent environments for the duration of their shifts. The use of air conditioning, active and passive ventilation, and environmental pollutants can expose workers to environmental and spatial risk as a consequence of entrainment of pollutants into the air (Ye et. al., 2017). Workers may therefore be exposed to a steady stream of pollutants and toxicants as a consequence of their being funnelled to their breathing zones via mechanical ventilation.

Workers are exposed to airborne compounds as a consequence of occupationally-produced airborne particles. Cutting, finishing, filing, and welding produce dusts (Sjögren, 1997), fumes (Torén et. al., 2007), smoke (Becklake, 1989), vapours (Nishida & Yatera, 2022), gases and other airborne particles. If a worker is not wearing appropriate protection, they may be exposed to these pollutants and experience deleterious consequences. It should be noted that pollutants do not need to be breathed in in order to cause health effects - some pollutants like those containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, reactive oxygen species, and airborne particulate matter can contact the skin and cause irritation and damage (Han et. al., 2025). Uncontrolled exposure to airborne pollutants does not need to reach the lung to cause health effects, and does not need to occur in significant quantity to cause discomfort. Nickel wood, formaldehyde, metallic, and other dusts can cause dermal sensitisation and irritation in susceptible workers even before reaching the airways (Safe Work Australia, 2025). This is because all pollutants, irritants, and toxicants are chemicals that can interact with their environments. Where workers are able to inhale airborne occupational pollutants like dusts, for example, the behaviour of those pollutants is influenced by that pollutant's aerodynamics and mass (Cocârţă, et. al., 2021). Particles with poor aerodynamics and heavy mass might not disperse far from the point of generation, while particles with smaller mass and better aerodynamic properties may be inhaled by the worker. After inhalation, the body's physiological defenses such as the mucous of the sinuses and the cilia of the airways can trap some environmental air pollutants, while others may be further entrained into the airways and carried to the lungs (Kilburn, 1967). Air pollutant particles that are inspired (breathed in) can sometimes be seen, while particles that are both breathed in and can travel into the lungs is respired and is typically too small to see (Rousso & Behrakis, 2005). Where partciles are captured by cilia in the sinus and the throat, they can be expelled by coughing, though may colour the expelled sputum owing to their collection and concentration in mucous (Lippman et. al., 1980). Particles that can reach the lungs may cause damage to lung tissue as in the case of respirable crystalline silica and coal dusts (Cohen et. al., 2008), or can be transferred across the lung tissue in the same manner as oxygen during gas exchange, travelling through the blood and accumulating in the body as in carbon monoxide, chromium ions, or acetone gas (Cipolla et. al., 2018). In this way, environmental and occupational pollutants can be breathed in by workers and, if they are not removed, can stay in contact with pulmonary tissue and cause direct damage as well as travelling within the body to cause damage to other organs (Winder, 2004)

In addition to those pollutants such as dusts and fumes produced by occupational tasks, workers are exposed to pollutants introduced to their environments through workspace ventilation which may draw pollutants from other workspaces, other areas within the same building, and the external environment (Jung et. al., 2015). Work is typically done in enclosed buildings whose arrangements of walls, roofs and floors create discrete spaces in which work is done. The isolation of air in these volumes does the job of controlling the exposure of the external environment to those hazards and toxicants generated as outputs and byproducts of work done, as well as allowing control of the work area. However, the isolation of air then requires that ventilation of workspaces is undertaken in order to ensure adequate air quality (Wargocki, 2016). This air must be brought in from outside the working environment, treated, and then circulated within the working environment via mechanical means. Through this process, pollutants in the air outside the workplace can be pumped into the workplace, or pollutants within the workplace circulated elsewhere (Myers & Maynard, 2005). A simple example of this is colloquially accessible - during the 2019-2020 bushfires in Victoria, Australia, the production of smoke, ash, and dust from the burning of trees, property, and animals was carried by the wind into metropolitan Melbourne. This smog was then drawn through air conditioners, fans, and passively through vents and weep-holes in buildings to the point where foul odours were appreciable even in closed rooms, which has been demonstrated to be possible in prior study (Sterling & Kobayashi, 1977). This colloquial example has an occupational allegory when examining indoor air quality in industrial parks and large manufacturing facilities, where aerosolized air pollutants may disperse from their points of origin and can be etrained into nearby residential living spaces (Zhang et. al., 2023). For these reasons, workplaces need to consider air quality not only as it relates to the wellbeing of workers from an occupational health and safety perspective, but to how it has the potential to affect the quality of life and health of nearby and neighbouring communities as a consequence of dispersal, and adopt an environmental or human health perspective when considering risk controls. The builders of homes should also be mindful of the potential for pollutants to be drawn into their buildings as a consequence of climactic, infrastructural, or occupationally driven concentrations of pollutants.

Air quality management can be undertaken through appropriate control of the release of airborne toxicants through minimisation of generation of pollutants, pollutant capture, airflow control, and dilution ventilation (Appleby, 1992). These are engineering controls best designed into the processes of work that can generate pollutants, such as using on-tool capture to minimise the dispersal of dusts from cutting, grinding, and sanding, which can be complemented by local exhaust ventilation (Kokkonen et. al., 2019). Where particles are dispersed into the air but are unable to be removed through centralised filtration, PPE and administrative controls such as shift rotation and shift time limitation may be necessary to reduce the impact of any uncontrollable or residual risk (Hesketh, 2023). However, this mitigation strategy relies on the worker's awareness of, adherence to, and competence in the use of that PPE, and its monitored effectiveness. The use of PPE in air quality controls is also only an occupational intervention. The dispersal of fumes, vapours, mists and gases into non-occupational adjacent or downstream residential air volumes necessitates monitoring to ensure the appropriateness of environmental risk control measures as well.

Air quality, like all occupational and environmental exposures, exists within broader ecosystems of occupational and environmental risk. As no individual control, policy, or engineering measure operates in isolation, effective management of risks developed from air pollutant exposure requires acknowledgement of the changing conditions of the built and natural environments and how those environments, their organisation, the organisation of work within them and the people in those environments interact to give rise to health and wellbeing outcomes. The management of airborne contaminants demands an appreciation of how people, tasks, and environments intersect. Workers bring with them diverse capacities, susceptibilities, and health profiles, and the air they breathe is influenced not only by the tasks they perform but by the design of the workspace, the behaviour of contaminants, and the adequacy of ventilation and filtration systems.

In practice, this means embedding air quality considerations into everyday operational decision‑making rather than treating them as isolated technical issues. Consultation with workers, systematic assessment of exposure pathways, and the integration of engineering, administrative, and behavioural controls form the foundation of a resilient air‑quality strategy. Just as with other ergonomic and occupational hazards, the goal is not only to prevent acute harm but to support successful, sustainable, and safe participation with duties of work. When businesses invest in understanding how pollutants behave, how work processes influence exposure, and how the surrounding community may be affected, they position themselves to manage risk proactively rather than reactively.

None of this information constitutes medical, legal, occupational health and safety, best guidance, standard, or other guidance, instruction, or prescription.

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Declaration: No artificial intelligence or assistive intelligence was used in the creation of this work.