Hi Emily,
Sorry for the late reply, been trying to reply for 3 days but something always crops up as I'm replying meaning I have to quickly close off and leave the house.
I believe it is safe to be around people with COPD. CF infections are usually CF specific. They have had to mutate to be able to grow in CF lungs, even psuedomonas. The regular strain of Psuedo would make us feel a bit icky, but could be quickly eradicated. It's why they are so big on cross-infection now, as they realised the mutated versions of the bugs that could grow in CF lungs were spreading between us all and growing stronger. The way they've mutated though means they can only grow in really sticky situations. I think there would be a risk if they were an ex-smoker and had lung disease from smoking. This is because smoking stop the CFTR protein working so well, creating a similar sticky environment. This is pretty new research, but they're now looking at how they've treated smoking related lung disease and CF and they might be able to cross-research ad come up with something better for us all.
We have a support worker who works on our CF ward, with pretty bad COPD. I would hope if she was a risk to us the CF docs would have picked up on that.
Hope this helps, and hope they can find a way to treat your boyfriend.
Gem xx