Clean Air Day takes place on Thursday 18 June 2026 and is the UK’s largest air pollution campaign. Led by Global Action Plan, the day encourages individuals, businesses, communities and local decision-makers to take action to reduce air pollution and protect public health.
The campaign highlights that air pollution affects everyone’s health and is linked to a wide range of health problems throughout our lives, from childhood asthma to heart and lung disease, diabetes and strokes in later life. It also reinforces that cleaner air brings wider benefits, helping to create healthier communities, support local economies, reduce sick days and protect the natural environment.
For employers, Clean Air Day is a useful reminder that the air people breathe should not only be considered in the context of the environment or the wider community. Air quality can also be a workplace health and safety issue. From dust, fumes and vapours to poor ventilation and exposure to hazardous substances, the air in and around a workplace can directly affect worker health, safety and wellbeing.
Why air quality matters in manufacturing
Manufacturing environments can present a very different air quality challenge to offices, homes or other indoor spaces. While poor air quality can affect everyone, manufacturing workers may face a higher level of risk because the work itself can generate airborne hazards like dust, fumes, vapours, gases, mists, fibres and particles can all be produced through everyday activities such as cutting, grinding, welding, spraying, sanding, mixing, cleaning, handling powders or operating machinery.
Manufacturing employees often work long shifts in the same environment, day after day, and it’s this repeated exposure that can become one of the most significant occupational health risks in the workplace. It is not always dramatic or immediately visible which is the danger. In many cases, the harm develops quietly over years, only becoming obvious when a worker experiences breathing difficulties, reduced lung function or a diagnosed health condition. That is what makes poor workplace air quality so dangerous. It can act like a silent killer, causing damage long before the full impact is recognised.
Global Action Plan’s report, With Every Breath We Make: Ensuring Healthy Air for Manufacturing Workers, highlights the scale of the issue. The manufacturing sector employs nearly three million people in the UK, and workers on production lines may spend a substantial proportion of their working lives inside industrial buildings. The air they breathe at work is therefore a core part of their health, safety and wellbeing.
The report also outlines the types of airborne hazards commonly associated with manufacturing settings, including dust from stone, cement, brick and concrete; airborne materials from spray painting and foam manufacturing; fumes from welding, soldering, cutting and grinding metals; and dust from flour, grain, animal feed or straw. These risks are especially concerning for workers with existing respiratory or cardiovascular conditions, but they can also contribute to new occupational health issues where exposure is not properly controlled.
Poor air quality linked to business impact
Poor air quality also has a clear business impact. Air pollution has been linked to sickness absence, reduced productivity and wider economic losses. The CBI has calculated that three million working days currently lost to illness could be regained if air pollution levels were reduced to World Health Organisation recommended levels. For manufacturing businesses airborne particles can affect machinery, increase cleaning requirements, reduce equipment efficiency, disrupt production and impact product quality.
This creates a strong case for manufacturers to treat air quality as both a health and safety priority and an operational performance issue. Employers already have a duty to protect workers from hazardous substances and harmful exposures. The real question is whether these airborne risks are being identified, monitored, controlled, reviewed and improved in a consistent way.
Clean Air Day provides a useful opportunity for manufacturing organisations to review the air people breathe at work. That could mean checking CoSHH assessments, reviewing exposure risks, assessing ventilation, inspecting extraction systems, monitoring dust or fume controls, engaging workers in hazard reporting, and ensuring employees understand how to protect themselves and others.
Emerging technology in workplace air quality
Many of the technologies used to manage air quality in manufacturing already exist, including local exhaust ventilation (LEV), dust extraction systems, filtration units, workplace exposure monitoring, air quality sensors, respiratory protective equipment (RPE) and CoSHH management systems (https://riskex.com/coshh-sds-software) .
These controls remain essential. However, many organisations still struggle to understand exactly where airborne risks occur, how exposure changes throughout the day and whether existing controls are performing as intended.
Emerging technologies aim to address this gap by providing real-time monitoring, predictive insights and automated responses.
AI-enabled predictive monitoring
AI-powered monitoring systems analyse data from multiple sources, including particulate matter, VOCs, carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, occupancy and ventilation performance.
Potential benefits include:
- Identifying patterns linked to specific processes, shifts or equipment
- Predicting when air quality is likely to deteriorate
- Alerting teams before exposure levels become problematic
- Supporting faster interventions, such as checking extraction systems or adjusting ventilation
This can be particularly valuable in manufacturing environments where dust, fumes and vapours fluctuate depending on the task being carried out.
Digital twins for workplace air modelling
A digital twin is a virtual model of a building, process or workspace that uses live data to simulate real-world conditions.
Potential applications include:
- Visualising how airborne contaminants move through a facility
- Identifying poorly ventilated areas or exposure hotspots
- Testing the impact of layout, equipment or process changes before implementation
- Improving communication of air quality risks through visual modelling
For manufacturers, this could support safer workplace design and more informed decision-making when introducing operational changes.
AI-linked smart ventilation and filtration
Smart ventilation systems use sensor data and automated controls to adjust airflow, extraction and filtration in response to changing conditions.
Potential benefits include:
- Increasing extraction when dust, fumes or VOCs rise
- Maintaining air quality based on actual risk levels rather than fixed settings
- Reducing unnecessary energy consumption
- Improving the responsiveness of existing control measures
Importantly, these systems should support and not replace core health and safety responsibilities such as risk assessment, CoSHH compliance, equipment maintenance and worker training.
Supports the move from assumption to evidence
The greatest opportunity offered by these types of emerging technologies is the shift from assumption to evidence.
Poor air quality is often invisible, and the health effects of exposure may take years to develop. These technologies can help employers understand where exposure is occurring, when it is happening and whether controls are working effectively.
The future of workplace air quality management is likely to combine established engineering controls with intelligent data. While these technologies show significant promise, their value ultimately depends on how organisations use the information they provide to improve controls, protect workers and prevent long-term harm.
Connecting air quality data to wider health and safety management
Monitoring workplace air quality is only part of the challenge. The real value comes from connecting that information to the wider health and safety processes that help organisations manage risk effectively.
Many manufacturers already use a mix of systems, sensors, software platforms and spreadsheets to manage safety, maintenance, compliance and operational performance. The problem is that these systems often operate independently, creating duplication, inefficiencies and gaps in visibility.
At Riskex, we understand these frustrations. Organisations do not want more disconnected technology, They want the tools they already use, or are planning to invest in, to work together in a meaningful way.
Introducing our partner ecosystem
Through AssessNET and our partner ecosystem, we help organisations connect health and safety data so that information flows between systems rather than being trapped in silos.
This connected approach can improve productivity by reducing manual administration, eliminating duplicate data entry and making it easier to access the information needed to make decisions quickly.
Most importantly, it helps organisations identify risks sooner, respond more effectively and demonstrate that worker health is being actively managed. Better monitoring is valuable, but better-connected safety data is what turns insight into action and supports safer, more efficient workplaces.
