Is Chronic Bronchitis Caused by Your Workplace?

When it comes to chronic bronchitis, everyone seems to put the blame #1 on smoking (past or present).

Yeah, we all know smoking is bad for you.

But your workplace carries almost 50% of the blame (whether you smoke or not), according to a new study in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.

And you can heal it without changing your workplace—or even without stopping smoking.

Most of us spend a third of our adult lives at work, breathing whatever is in the air around us.

For some occupations, this means regular exposure to chemical vapors, gases, dusts, and fumes (VGDF) that can irritate and damage our lungs over time.

Researchers wanted to understand just how much these workplace exposures might contribute to chronic bronchitis.

The research took place in Telemark County, a region in southern Norway.

It included over 20,000 people between the ages of 16 and 55. The scientists used a two-step process:

1. First, they asked participants to complete a questionnaire about their health and workplace conditions.

2. Then, they matched participants’ job titles with the Nordic Job Exposure Matrix (N-JEM) tool. This tool helps identify what substances people are likely exposed to in different occupations.

Chronic bronchitis was defined in this study as a cough that brings up mucus and lasts for at least three months a year for two years in a row.

After collecting all this information, the researchers analyzed the data, accounting for important factors like age, sex, and smoking status that could affect the results.

Their findings were shocking:

1. 5.3% of participants had chronic bronchitis symptoms.

2. People who reported daily exposure to VGDF were 3.6 times more likely to have chronic bronchitis than those without exposure.

3. Even occasional workplace exposure to VGDF increased the risk by 1.6 times.

4. Among people who had smoked at some point, the link between job-related irritants and bronchitis was particularly strong.

5. Using the job exposure matrix (rather than self-reports), chronic bronchitis was still clearly connected to irritants. But only among smokers.

6. According to the job exposure matrix, among ever-smokers (current or former), those with workplace exposure to irritants were 1.4 times more likely to have chronic bronchitis.

7. The researchers estimated that workplace exposure was responsible for 41% of all chronic bronchitis cases — 49% among people who had smoked and 37% among those who never smoked.

If you work where you’re regularly breathing in dust, gas, fumes, or chemical vapors (think construction, cleaning, manufacturing, or even hairdressing), you might want to wear a mask and campaign for better workplace ventilation.

Now that we know why you suffer from chronic bronchitis, let’s look at how to heal it.

Fortunately, it’s quite easy to heal chronic bronchitis using the simple lifestyle changes explained here (thousands of readers have already done it)…