What is COSHH and what does it mean for your health at work?

Employers have a legal duty to take health and safety seriously and to keep up to date with workplace safety legislation to prevent any avoidable workplace accidents.

In this blog, our industrial disease solicitors look at what the COSHH regulations are, the possible implications for your health if they are not followed and how you can protect yourself as an employee.

What is COSHH?

COSHH stands for the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. It’s the legal requirement for employers to control employees’ exposure to substances that may cause ill health and long-term sickness in the workplace. 

The law around COSHH exists to control exposure to hazardous substances that cause employees preventable illnesses such as cancer and respiratory diseases. 

What counts as a hazardous substance?

Many materials or substances used or created at work could harm your health. Hazardous substances that fall under the COSHH regulations include:

• Chemicals and products containing chemicals, e.g. acids and cleaning products, including bleach and solvents
• Fumes, e.g. welding vapours, cleaning agents, vehicle pollutants and ammonia from hair dye
• Dust, e.g. silica and wood dust
• Vapours, e.g. petrol, diesel, glue, varnish and acetone
• Mists, e.g. pesticide mists, chemical cleaning spray mist, spray paint mists and oil-based mists from machinery lubricants
• Nanotechnology, e.g. carbon nanotubes and metal oxides
• Gases, e.g. helium, carbon monoxide, chlorine and ammonia
• Biological agents such as viruses, bacteria and parasites (these are classed as hazardous if the packaging has the relevant symbols)
• Disease-causing germs, e.g. legionnaires disease, Covid-19 and germs used in laboratories

However, COSHH does not cover the following as they have their own regulations:

• Lead
• Asbestos
• Radioactive substances

Who does COSHH apply to?

COSHH applies to anyone who employs staff, no matter how big or small the organisation is and whether it’s an industrial site or an office.

If you are self-employed with no employees but your nature of work requires you to take hazardous substances to another premises where other people work; for example, if you run your own cleaning company and you’re cleaning a busy office, COSHH regulations still apply.

What sectors are most affected by COSHH regulations?

Certain industries and jobs are affected by COSHH more than others. This is because there is a higher risk of hazardous substances leading to potential ill health.

Below are some examples of these sectors and what employers should be providing their employees to stay safe and keep in line with safety regulations:

COSHH guidance for employers

To comply with the COSHH regulations, employers should ensure that exposure to substances hazardous to health is controlled and reduced to as low as is reasonably practicable.

When working with hazardous substances in the workplace, employers have the following obligations to enable a controlled and safe working environment for their employees:

• Risk assessments: identify the hazards (e.g. product labels or safety data sheets), consider who might be at risk and regularly review this.
• Control exposure:
  • Provide, replace and pay for PPE
  • Give regular training to staff
  • Plan for an emergency
  • Consider whether there is an alternative process that doesn’t involve a hazardous substance (or substitute another substance with less risk)
  • Provide monitoring and health surveillance in appropriate circumstances
• Train staff: ensuring workers know how to handle substances safely.
• Keep records: businesses with five or more employees must record their findings from the risk assessment. Employers need to keep a record of employee health records and medical records (these can only be accessed with the consent of the employee and must be kept confidential).
• Monitor and review: employers should regularly review their risk assessments, and the control measures implemented, ensuring that these are adequate.

Workplace exposure limits

For some substances, there are set workplace exposure limits (WELs). WELs represent the maximum concentrations of a hazardous substance in the air, averaged over a set period of time, that an employee should be exposed to.

Where a substance has a WEL, employers must implement extra monitoring to ensure that exposure falls below the prescribed level. This means measuring the substance in the air that a worker breathes whilst completing a task. 

You can check whether a substance has a WEL on the HSE website.

What happens when COSHH isn’t followed?

If COSHH isn’t followed, employees are at risk of experiencing serious and potentially life-threatening health conditions from exposure to hazardous substances. The effect of exposure can be immediate or can take many years to develop. Examples include:

• Chemicals: skin irritation such as occupational dermatitis (LINK), burns, asthma, organ damage and cancer
• Fumes: choking and breathing problems, irritation to eyes and skin, headaches, and confusion. Prolonged exposure can cause kidney damage and cancer.
• Dust: lung cancer, lung disease, asthma, bronchitis, eye irritation and heart disease.
• Vapours: headaches, nausea and vomiting, and long-term organ damage
• Mists: skin irritation and respiratory problems.
• Gases: suffocation
• Biological agents: skin infections, respiratory illnesses and allergic reactions
• Disease-causing germs can cause infections, long-term health effects and severe illness

In our experience of handling occupational illness claims, common failures of poor COSHH compliance include:

• Outdated or non-existent risk assessments
• Inadequate PPE
• Employer failure to provide routine health and safety checks
• A lack of training
• Failure to report early symptoms (or symptoms being dismissed by employers)

What to do if you suspect COSHH failures affected your health

If you suspect COSHH failures at work have affected your health, you should:

• Report this to your employer (either your manager or HR) and ensure they make a note in the accident book
• Request medical records from your GP and write and create a written timeline of symptoms you consider relate to your employer’s COSHH failures
• Report the incident to HSE
• Seek legal advice from a lawyer who specialises in industrial disease claims

Your rights if you’ve been harmed by workplace substance exposure

If you have been harmed by substance exposure in the workplace, you may be able to bring a personal injury claim if there is evidence of your employer’s negligence.

For your claim to succeed, you will need to be able to prove that your employer did not comply with their duties under the COSHH regulations and that failure led to you being exposed to harmful substances which caused you injury or illness.

Evidence which can help to prove this includes:

• Health and safety risk assessment reports
• Chemical data sheets
• Medical records and reports confirming your diagnosis and treatment
• Witness reports: gather information from coworkers who can support your claim
• Accident book records

All the above can be requested from your employer.

How long do I have to make a COSHH claim?

You will generally have three years to bring forward a COSHH claim starting from the date of the incident. For industrial disease and occupational illness, that three-year clock often starts from your ‘date of knowledge’, meaning when you first realised that your condition was linked to your work. Read more about limitation periods in personal injury claims here.

Contact our industrial disease solicitors

If you’ve been exposed to a hazardous substance at work due to workplace negligence, our personal injury lawyers might be able to help. Call us on 0117 325 2929 or fill out our online enquiry form.