Phoenix Journal · LEV Testing
COSHH is not only about what your team breathes in - it is about what lands on their skin. Occupational dermatitis is one of the most common, most preventable and most overlooked work-related illnesses in commercial kitchens.
A cautionary tale
The COSHH file was thick, tidy and signed off - and none of it saved the kitchen porter's hands.
Picture a busy production kitchen that had done the obvious things. There was an LEV test certificate on the wall for the extraction canopy, safety data sheets in a ring binder, and a laminated sheet reminding everyone to wear goggles when decanting oven cleaner. The airborne risks had been thought about. The paperwork looked healthy.
Then a long-serving pot wash and cleaning operative started the day the deep-clean crew were in, degreasing the canopy, filters and the run of ductwork behind it. For the best part of a shift his hands moved between hot water, detergent, a caustic degreaser and a sanitiser spray, in and out of thin disposable gloves that tore and were not always replaced. He had done versions of this for years. His skin had been quietly getting drier, tighter and more cracked for months, and he had put it down to the weather.
Within a fortnight the backs of his hands were red, weeping and split at the knuckles. A GP diagnosed irritant contact dermatitis, signed him off, and the business was suddenly a person down in its wash-up and cleaning cover - the one role that keeps a kitchen legally able to trade. Nobody had been careless in an obvious way. The failure was quieter than that, and it is extremely common.
What went wrong
The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) do not stop at the lungs. They cover exposure by any route, and skin contact is explicitly one of them. In practice, though, plenty of kitchen COSHH assessments quietly become inhalation assessments. Fumes, mists and vapours get attention because they are what LEV and ventilation deal with. The dermal route - splashes, immersion, residue on surfaces, and the slow grind of wet work - gets a line that says "wear gloves" and little else.
That is the gap this kitchen fell into. Three things had gone wrong at once:
Dermatitis is not a rash that clears up over the weekend. Once skin is sensitised to an allergen it can react for life, and even irritant cases can force someone out of the trade that damaged them. It is also reportable: a doctor-diagnosed case linked to significant or regular exposure to a skin irritant or sensitiser is reportable to the enforcing authority under RIDDOR. This is not a minor welfare footnote. It is a notifiable occupational disease sitting inside a COSHH failure.
The scale of it
If this reads like an unlucky one-off, the national picture says otherwise. Across the UK an estimated 84,000 people have contact dermatitis that was caused or made worse by their work. Food and catering account for around a tenth of that burden, and the rate of new cases among chefs, cooks and catering staff runs at roughly twice the average for all other industries. Prolonged contact with water, soaps and detergents is behind the majority of those catering cases.
The uncomfortable part is that most of this is preventable with controls that cost very little. HSE's own surveillance found only about a quarter of businesses that identified skin hazards in their COSHH assessments actually had a skin care policy to match. The hazard gets written down and then nothing changes on the floor. That is exactly the shape of the failure above: a real risk, correctly implied by the chemicals in use, with no live control wrapped around it.
It is worth being honest about why the skin route hides so well. Airborne risk announces itself - you can smell the degreaser, you can feel the canopy needs extracting, and the LEV test gives you a number. Skin damage arrives slowly and off-site. Someone's hands get a bit worse each week at home, not in a dramatic moment you can point to. By the time it is undeniable, the exposure that caused it has been happening for a very long time.
The fix
HSE's framework for skin is refreshingly simple - Avoid, Protect, Check. It maps neatly onto the same hierarchy you already use for airborne risk, and it turns a vague "wear gloves" into a working system. Here is how the kitchen above rebuilt its controls.
None of this is exotic. It is the same discipline you already apply to the airborne side of COSHH, pointed at the route everyone forgets. And the two routes genuinely travel together - the caustic degreasers and sanitisers that threaten skin during a canopy and duct clean are the same products whose mists and vapours make the airborne assessment matter. A kitchen that thinks clearly about one tends to get the other right too, which is why the same COSHH review that hardens your skin controls is a natural moment to confirm your extraction and ventilation are doing their job. If your team's biggest inhalation worry is what they breathe rather than what they touch, the parallel case on occupational asthma causes hiding in plain sight is worth reading alongside this one - and busy seasonal sites juggling both should look at the catering side of running a holiday park, where the same COSHH pressures stack up fast.
Questions
It is squarely inside COSHH. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations cover exposure by any route, and skin contact is explicitly one of them alongside inhalation. That means your COSHH assessment has to consider splashes, immersion, surface residue and wet work, not just fumes and vapours. If it only addresses what your team breathes in, it is incomplete.
Often, yes. A case of contact dermatitis diagnosed by a doctor is reportable under RIDDOR when the person's work involves significant or regular exposure to a chemical or biological skin irritant or sensitiser - which includes any substance labelled as irritating to the skin or as able to cause sensitisation by skin contact. Kitchen degreasers, oven cleaners and sanitisers commonly fall into that category. Keep a record and report qualifying cases to the enforcing authority.
Gloves are one control, not the whole answer, and used badly they make things worse. Thin disposable gloves offer little protection against caustic degreasers, they trap sweat against the skin - which is itself a wet-work exposure - and a torn glove is worse than none. The stronger controls sit earlier in the hierarchy: avoiding contact through substitution and tools, then adding correct chemical-resistant gloves, after-work moisturiser and regular skin checks on top.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
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