Can I Get Social Security Disability Benefits for Asthma?

What Is RFC?

If your asthma is not severe enough to meet or equal a listing at Step 3 of the Sequential Evaluation Process, the Social Security Administration will need to determine your residual functional capacity (RFC) to decide whether you are disabled at Step 4 and Step 5 of the Sequential Evaluation Process. RFC is a claimant’s ability to perform work-related activities. In other words, it is what you can still do despite your limitations. An RFC for physical impairments is expressed in terms of whether the Social Security Administration believes you can do heavy, medium, light, or sedentary work in spite of your impairments. The lower your RFC, the less the Social Security Administration believes you can do.

The Social Security Administration should carefully assess your RFC assessment because the severity of asthma may fluctuate depending on how effective treatment has been. Consequently, your RFC should not be based as strongly on the results spirometric testing (testing of how much air a person can inhale and exhale) as it is for other types of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). See Meeting Social Security Administration Listing 3.03A for Asthma for more on spirometry.

Your own reports of your symptoms can be especially important. See how Keeping a Symptom Diary and Record of PEF Can Help You Win Social Security Disability Benefits.

Exercise-Induced Asthma

Exercise-induced asthma, also known as exercise-induced bronchoconstriction (EIB), is particularly difficult for the Social Security Administration to evaluate since the severity will not necessarily be revealed by spirometry (testing of how much air you can inhale and exhale) which is obtained while you are at rest and not exercising. See Meeting Social Security Administration Listing 3.03A for Asthma for more on spirometry. However, if you have this type of asthma, your doctor’s medical records that document the details and severity of your attacks have considerable credibility with Social Security Administration—especially if those records document a problem over a long period before you applied for benefits. See also how Keeping a Symptom Diary and Record of PEF Can Help You Win Social Security Disability Benefits.

In determining your RFC, Social Security Administration must consider whether your condition is aggravated by environmental factors and whether you must avoid jobs that would expose you to those factors. Avoiding exposure to dust, gases, pollution, and inadequate ventilation may be especially important to a person with asthma.

Sometimes a person’s asthma attacks are precipitated by substances inhaled in the workplace (allergens). If your symptoms get better over the weekend and worsen during the week when you go back to work, something at your job may be causing your attacks. If so, it is important that problems related to workplace exposure be documented in your medical records. Make sure you report them to you doctor. Exposure to even small doses of the problem substance can precipitate worsening of asthma or even be lethal. Animal studies have demonstrated life-threatening reactions (e.g., fall in blood pressure) in as little as a millionth of a gram (microgram) of allergen delivered to the bronchial tree of susceptible dogs.

In determining whether