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In March 1989, Violette Hutchins got a job as a cable assembler with the electronics firm Huber and Suhner. The company made test units for Harrier jump jets and parts for Hewlett Packard computers, and Violette's work involved soldering electrical connections.

"It was a very good job," she remembers. "It was well paid, interesting and meant I didn't have to work nights or weekends." That was important for Violette, because her husband Brian was a fireman, and when they both worked shifts, they seldom saw each other. She hoped that the new job would allow her to spend more time with Brian and their children, such as going to karate, which they did as a family. Little did she know that the new job would damage her health so badly that she would need to rely on an oxygen cylinder, even to hold a conversation, for the rest of her life.

Violette remembers beginning to feel ill just three months into her new job, in the summer of 1989. "I had what I thought was a cold," she says. "But I couldn't get rid of it. I had a horrific cough, and went to and fro to the doctor. First he said I had hay fever, then 'flu, then hay fever again. Then I had a chest infection."

Just before Christmas, Violette and Brian began to get an idea of what the trouble was. Brian explains, "We went down to my brother's in November, and Vi had an attack which sent her into hospital. It was the doctor there who said he thought she had asthma."

Armed with an inhaler, Violette went back to work but her asthma just got worse. "I could not seem to get back on my feet. The doctors could not find out why it wasn't getting better with the inhalers, but it wasn't. It was just getting worse. I collapsed at work, and was rushed into hospital."

The following year, after four or five spells in hospital, a doctor finally asked her where she worked. Violette remembers, "The attacks were getting very violent and they just came out of the blue." In hospital in Oxford, a chest specialist said, "Out of curiosity, what do you do for a living?" Violette says: "I told him I was a solderer, and he didn't say anything. He walked away and was gone for about half an hour. When he came back he said that he knew what my problem was."

With Violette's permission, the same doctor spoke to her boss, and in June 1992 she was moved from soldering to an office job. But by then the damage was done. She had been sensitised to the rosin flux, and as she had to go into the soldering room to check on drawings, the attacks continued. After a 10-day spell in hospital in June 1992, Suhner's called her in from sick leave to give her the sack.

Violette, a member of the TGWU since her teens, took Suhner's to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal, and accepted three months' wages from the company before the tribunal met. However, it was while talking to the union's solicitor about the unfair dismissal, that she discovered she might also have a case for compensation.

The TGWU supported Violette through a five-year battle for compensation for her occupational asthma, and in November 1996, she accepted an out-of-court settlement from Suhner's of £500,000. The case, however, left her almost as exhausted as her industrial disease.

"To be honest, if I'd have known what was going to happen in those five years, I would not even have started it," she admits. "I should never have been made to fight for five years. I'm sure they do it in the hope that you'll either die or run out of money. All I wanted was for them to admit what they had done. I didn't want their money, because I can't buy what I want, I can't buy my health back."

Brian gave up his job in 1994 to look after Violette, who needs 24-hour care. The following year, they asked the court for an interim payment to buy a bungalow, because Violette could no longer climb the stairs. Despite being awarded £50,000, the DSS clawed most of it back. Brian says, "Two hours (after the award was made) the Department of Social Security (DSS) called and said they wanted five years benefit repaid. They took £42,000 and we still couldn't move. We had to put up with the stairs for another 18 months."

"If the government and the DSS had their way, I'd be shut away in this house, because that's all you're supplied with," Violette says, tapping the three-foot tall oxygen cylinder beside her. The electric wheelchair and portable oxygen she needs just to get outside cost £3,000.

What Violette did discover during the case, was that Suhner's had made no attempt to protect her, or the 12 others she worked with, from breathing in the solder flux fume. The soldering room was a converted office with no ventilation except the windows. There were no medical checks on the workers, either before or after they started work, and none were given any information on the hazards of rosin. The site was not registered as a factory, so the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had no reason to think they ought to pay it a visit. But despite all this, the firm was never prosecuted by the HSE.

As Violette explains, "They had been using dangerous chemicals all that time. I should have had a medical before they employed me. They would have found out that there was asthma in the family, and I should have had a medical every six months because of the hazards of the work. We didn't have a company doctor, we didn't have a nurse. We didn't have a rest room. Now they have medicals. It's all changed, they've virtually built a new factory, but there are still 12 people walking around that could still go down with occupational asthma; it can take up to 25 years to develop. I hope they don't because I wouldn't wish it on anybody."

The extent of the problem

Rosin (sometimes called colophony) is a natural product which comes from pine sap. Rosin solder flux fume is a well-known irritant and sensitiser, and is a major cause of occupational asthma. In 1993 doctors from the HSE examined 152 women like Violette Hutchins. They all worked as solderers in medium-sized electronics firms. All were exposed to rosin solder flux fumes because local exhaust ventilation in the factories was inadequate or non-existent. Almost half of the women (49%) had a persistent wheeze or chest tightness, and a quarter (24%) had occupational asthma. The actual numbers are likely to be larger, because many of the women made ill by the fume will have had to give up work. According to the study, "The effects of colophony are well known. The surprise is that we can still discover them so readily" [K. Palmer and G. Crane, Respiratory disease in workers exposed to colophony solder flux fumes: continuing health concerns, Occupational Medicine 1997, 47(8), 491-496].

HSE advice

In its publication Asthmagen? the HSE says, "Around 1980, reports of a high prevalence of occupational asthma among solderers in the electronics industry led to the conclusion that there was a significant health problem caused by exposure to rosin-based solder flux fume."

In its leaflet for employers, Controlling health risks from rosin-based solder fluxes, the HSE says rosin fume "is one of the most significant causes of occupational asthma in the UK."

Once asthma has developed, even small exposures to fume can lead to asthma attacks. When fully developed, the condition is irreversible. The fumes can also irritate the upper respiratory tract, eyes, and skin. Early symptoms of exposure are watery and prickly eyes, a runny or blocked nose, sore throat, cough, wheezing, tight chestedness and breathlessness.

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