Current opinion in allergy and clinical immunology
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Curr Opin Allergy Clin Immunol · Apr 2001
ReviewWorkplace irritant exposures: do they produce true occupational asthma?
The recognition that irritant exposures can cause asthma is not new. Many investigators turn towards the gassings of soldiers in World War I as the first examples of this, while Brooks, in 1985, reported this in detail in workers and called it 'Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome (RADS)'. ⋯ This report contrasts RADS and occupational asthma and finds that although there may be some difference in lung pathology, reports for the past years since Brooks' initial reports have shown that the line separating occupational asthma and RADS has become increasingly blurred, rather than increasingly distinct, with considerable overlap in the clinical symptoms with the perspective that these described entities are a part of a continuum. Perhaps the development of animal models for RADS may hasten further understanding.