The risk of asthma may be greater for nurses who are exposed to cleaning and disinfecting products in the workplace. Examining that risk is part of a $750,000 grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to a researcher at the University of Arizona Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.
Principal investigator Amanda Wilson, PhD, an assistant professor in the Zuckerman College of Public Health’s Department of Community, Environment and Policy will use the grant to develop methodology to educate nurses about cleaning and disinfecting protocols and the potential association to asthma risks.
“Translating these concerns into cleaning and disinfection protocol changes is challenging due to logistical constraints and the lack of awareness about asthma risks,” Dr. Wilson said.
According to Dr. Wilson, cleaning processes in health care facilities involve an inherent “risk-risk tradeoff.” Increased use of cleaning and disinfection products leads to increased work-related asthma risks. Early survey data indicate that nurses are generally willing to increase infection risks to maintain lower asthma risks if they think they will recover.
In her study, “Work-related Asthma Risk for Nursing Staff Conducting Cleaning and Disinfection: Translation of Risk-risk Tradeoff Methodology,” Dr. Wilson will gather five years of data to build the methodologies necessary for reaching tolerable occupational respiratory disease risks for nurses and to guide public health policies.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were more than three million registered nurses in the U.S. in 2022 and more than 56,000 of them worked in Arizona. Asthma affects more than 27 million people in the United States, or about one in 12 Americans, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Dr. Wilson co-authored a 2022 paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on this topic.
