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Important Difference between Occupational Hazard Exposure among Shift Workers and Other Workers; Comparing Workplace before and after 1980.

ABSTRACT: Improving health and safety at work has been an important issue for the European Union since the 1980s. The existing literature supports that shift work is associated with multiple indicators of poor health but frequently neglects the potential impact of occupational hazards. This study aims at describing and comparing the exposure to different workplace hazards among shift and other workers before and after 1980. Exposure to different workplace hazards (noise, dust, pollutant, and other physical stressors) were analyzed among 119,413 participants from the UK Biobank cohort. After stratifying the analyses before and after 1980, exposure was compared between shift and other workers. Potential confounding variables (sex, age, ethnicity, education level, occupational category, and neuroticism) were adjusted for in the log-binomial regression. Shift workers had a higher prevalence ratio (PR) than other workers of being exposed to almost all identified hazards both before or after 1980. They were also more likely to be exposed to multiple hazards compared to other workers, both before 1980 (PR: 1.25; 95% CI: 1.21-1.30) and after 1980 (PR: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.30-1.38). The prevalence of all measured risk factors was higher after 1980 than before 1980 among shift workers. Of note, the work environment has improved overall for other workers. Our findings suggest that changes at the workplace have benefited other workers more than shift workers as they are still more exposed to all occupational hazards.

SUBMITTER: Miguet M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7602472 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Important Difference between Occupational Hazard Exposure among Shift Workers and Other Workers; Comparing Workplace before and after 1980.

Miguet Maud M Rukh Gull G Titova Olga E OE Schiöth Helgi B HB

International journal of environmental research and public health 20201015 20

Improving health and safety at work has been an important issue for the European Union since the 1980s. The existing literature supports that shift work is associated with multiple indicators of poor health but frequently neglects the potential impact of occupational hazards. This study aims at describing and comparing the exposure to different workplace hazards among shift and other workers before and after 1980. Exposure to different workplace hazards (noise, dust, pollutant, and other physica ...[more]

PMID: 33076288

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Project description:Background: Lower back pain is a public health concern affecting 70-85% of the world's population. There is paucity of published data on the prevalence, disability and risk factors for lower back pain among health workers in Uganda. Objective: To determine the frequency rate (note that is it implicit that frequency is a rate like incidence so including rate seems redundant here. This is bounded by zero and infinity. In contrast, prevalence is bounded by 0 and 1 and is thus a proportion not a rate) of lower back pain and its associated risks amongst health professionals in the Arua District of Uganda. Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study of 245 consecutive participants conducted during February-April 2020. We stratified risks as individual or work related and analyzed the data using IBM SPSS version 25. Chi-square was used to measure the significance of association between categorical variables at 95% confidence interval, regarding a p ≤ 0.05 as significant. Results: The mean age of participants was 40.87 years ± 8.74 (SD), with female predominance (69.8%). Majority were either general nurses or midwives (64.9%) and more than half had practiced for over 6-10 years. The frequency rate of lower back pain was 39.6% (n = 97). Individual factors associated with LBP were; cigarette smoking (X 2 = 33.040; P ≤ 0.001), alcohol consumption (X 2 = 13.581; P ≤ 0.001), age (X 2 = 14.717; P = 0.002), and female gender (X 2 = 4.802; P = 0.028). The work related factors significantly associated with lower back pain were: being a nurse/midwife (X 2 = 9.829; P = 0.007), working in the outpatient department (X 2 = 49.752; P ≤ 0.001), bending (X 2 = 43.912; P ≤ 0.001), lifting (X 2 = 33.279; P < 0.001), over standing (X 2 = 40.096; P ≤ 0.001), being in awkward positions (X 2 = 15.607; P= < 0.001), and pushing patients (X 2 = 21.999; P ≤ 0.001). Conclusion: The frequency rate of low back pain was high amongst health workers and its main associated individual and work related factors could have been prevented. Health workers should strike a balance between caring for their personal back-health and meeting clients' needs while manually handling patients. Ergonomic structuring, job organization, back health care courses and use of assistive equipment could reduce such occupational hazards in our low resourced settings.

Project description:BackgroundThe knowledge, from laboratory studies dating back to the 1950s on the importance of the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and aerobic workload for workers health, is fundamental for promoting sustainable healthy employability among ageing blue-collar workers today. However, the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and aerobic workload has not yet been documented during daily work, and we do not know if it applies to the normal work of blue-collar workers in different age groups. We aim to investigate the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and aerobic workload among blue-collar workers using measurements of 24-h heart rate collected over consecutive working days.MethodsWe analyzed baseline cardiorespiratory fitness, assessed using a sub-maximal cycle ergometer test, and 1-4 days of 24-h heart rate measurement from 497 blue-collar workers participating in the DPHACTO study. We investigated the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and aerobic workload defined as the average percentage of heart rate reserve (%HRR), maximum %HRR and the duration time spent at a high HRR (> 30%) during working hours. The association was assessed using multivariate linear regression models adjusted for age, sex, self-rated health, shift-work, prescription medication and occupation, as well as for different age strata.ResultsHigher cardiorespiratory fitness was significantly associated with decreased mean %HRR -0.32 [95% CI -0.39 to -0.25], maximum %HRR -0.35 [95% CI -0.45 to -0.25] and time spent at ≥ 30% HRR; -1.8% [95% CI -2.2 to -1.5%]. These associations were evident across age groups, with slightly stronger associations for workers aged 46-51 (total range 18-68).ConclusionsHigher cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with the decreased aerobic workload during normal work across all age groups and levels of work intensity. Our findings highlight the importance of cardiorespiratory fitness when considering the workload and its relevance in the promotion of healthy sustainable employment.

Dataset Information

Important Difference between Occupational Hazard Exposure among Shift Workers and Other Workers; Comparing Workplace before and after 1980.

Publications

Important Difference between Occupational Hazard Exposure among Shift Workers and Other Workers; Comparing Workplace before and after 1980.

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