FLOUR DUST AND BAKERS ASTHMA

That this House notes with concern that the Workplace Health Expert Committee of the Health and Safety Executive, in its 2017 report, entitled The Risks of Bakery Work, found that exposures to flour are, and remain, frequently higher than the level at which occupational asthma would develop, and that the incidence of the disease is similarly high and unremitting; further notes the finding that the use of a Workplace Exposure Limit for flour dust of 10 mg/m3 appears not to have been effective in reducing either exposure levels or the incidence in occupational asthma in this sector; regrets that much of the regulatory oversight for medium-sized and small bakeries in the UK falls to local authority environmental health departments which have suffered huge cuts under the Government's austerity programme; and therefore calls for additional funding to be made available so that the report's key recommendation that one or more evidence-based intervention studies are developed, implemented and evaluated with the key stakeholders in the sector might be taken forward.