Work history-taking should not depend on job titles. For manufacturing flow, this may begin with a raw material and end with a finished product. This could range from bottling soft drinks to producing equipment. A legal assistant may pick up files, which then go to a photoreproduction center and are returned before going to a mail room. The photoreproduction area may include a large number of photocopiers in a relatively small and poorly ventilated area.
Nearby workstations can also be critical.
Clearly, a secretary who worked in an asbestos textile weaving factory had a different set of exposures than one whose career was in an insurance company surrounded by other clerical workers without any nearby workstations of risk. This may also be true of processes carried out on a small scale under a laboratory hood or, as another example, in a closed boiler being cleaned or flushed for servicing. The patient and health-care provider rarely have detailed, quantified workplace exposure data such as might be provided by an industrial hygienist. Nonetheless, the patient's simple descriptors of the workplace, although not as precise as industrial hygiene measurements, can document airborne exposures. For dust exposure, it is particularly useful to ask whether cough or nasal discharge at the end of the day is colored by dust and whether work clothes are dust-laden by the end of the day.