Occupational exposure to cleaning products and asthma in hospital workers

International audience; Cleaning products may cause work-related asthma, but information regarding the specific exposures involved is scarce. We aimed to determine the associations between asthma and occupational exposure to cleaning agents in hospital workers. Analyses were conducted in 179 (136 women) hospital workers and a reference population of 545 subjects (18-79 years) from the French case-control and familial Epidemiological study on the Genetics and Environment of Asthma (2003-2007). Exposures to cleaning agents were estimated using three methods: self-report, expert assessment and an asthma-specific job-exposure matrix (JEM). Associations between cleaning products and current asthma were evaluated by logistic regressions, stratified by sex and adjusted for age and smoking status. According to expert assessment, 55% of male and 81% of female hospital workers were exposed to cleaning/disinfecting tasks weekly (p