Affected workers should be offered alternative employment. Continued exposure leads to development of persistent symptoms and progressive decline in FEV1.

Patient history should reveal exposure to cotton, flax, hemp, or jute dust. Diagnostic tests include a lung function test and a chest x ray or CT scan.

Measurable change in lung function before and after working shifts is key to diagnosis. Patients suffering from byssinosis show a significant drop in FEV1 over the course of work shift.

Chest radiographs show areas of opacity due to fibrosis of the pulmonary parenchyma.

Positive indications on patient assessment:

- Shortness of breath

- Chest X-ray may show a characteristic patchy, subpleural, bibasilar interstitial infiltrates or small cystic radiolucencies called honeycombing.

Pneumoconiosis in combination with multiple pulmonary rheumatoid nodules in rheumatoid arthritis patients is known as Caplan's syndrome.

Pneumoconiosis is an occupational lung disease and a restrictive lung disease caused by the inhalation of dust, often in mines and from agriculture.

In 2013, it resulted in 260,000 deaths, up from 251,000 deaths in 1990. Of these deaths, 46,000 were due to silicosis, 24,000 due to asbestosis and 25,000 due to coal workers pneumoconiosis.

Prevention measures include avoidance of the irritant through its removal from the workplace or through technical shielding by the use of potent irritants in closed systems or automation, irritant replacement or removal and personal protection of the workers.

In order to better prevent and control occupational disease, most countries revise and update their related laws, most of them greatly increasing the penalties in case of breaches of the occupational disease laws. Occupational disease prevention, in general legally regulated, is part of good supply chain management and enables companies to design and ensure supply chain social compliance schemes as well as monitor their implementation to identify and prevent occupational disease hazards.

Occupational lung diseases include asbestosis among asbestos miners and those who work with friable asbestos insulation, as well as black lung (coalworker's pneumoconiosis) among coal miners, silicosis among miners and quarrying and tunnel operators and byssinosis among workers in parts of the cotton textile industry.

Occupational asthma has a vast number of occupations at risk.

Bad indoor air quality may predispose for diseases in the lungs as well as in other parts of the body.

A toxic tort claim is a specific type of personal injury lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims that exposure to a chemical or dangerous substance caused the plaintiff's injury or disease.

People may be exposed to toxic chemicals or similar dangerous substances from pharmaceutical products, consumer products, the environment, or in the home or at work. Many toxic tort cases arise either from the use of medications, or through exposure at work.