Archives Of Occupational Health
Volume:6 Issue: 1, Jan 2022

As far as the working environment is concerned, traffic police officers are usually exposed to different health problems due to the nature of their work. This study aimed to assess the life quality of traffic police officers working in Shyambazar jurisdiction, Kolkata, India.

A cross-sectional study was done by simple random sampling, on 115 traffic police officers, working in Shyambazar jurisdiction at Kolkata, India. The World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) was adopted. The four domains of the study were physical health, psychological health, social relationship and environmental health regarding the age and working experiences, and frequency, hours of work, and their mean scores were compared respectively. ANOVA and independent t-test were performed to interpret the results using SPSS software.

The mean age of the respondents was 37.5 ± 6.162. The mean of work experience was 11.2 ± 5.122 years. The overall life quality of the traffic police officers was good. The mean difference of work experiences was statistically significant (p<0.05) regarding the working environment. The mean difference in working hours was statistically significant (p<0.05) with respect to physical health. The mean difference of working frequency was statistically significant (p<0.05) concerning the social and environmental health domains. It was noted that environmental health was most affected followed by psychological and physical health.

Making time for leisure and recreational activities along with regular counseling sessions for traffic police officers helps improve the quality of their life.

This study was carried out aimed to investigate the effect of anxiety caused by Covid-19 on the quality of life of people working in the industrial sector.

212 people working in the industrial sector participated in a descriptive cross-sectional study using multi-stage random sampling. Data was collected using the Demographic Information Questionnaire, the Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS) and The World Health Organization Quality of Life–BREF (WHOQOL-BREF). SPSS statistical software version 24 was used for data analysis. The significance level of 0.05 is considered.

The mean age of participants was 33.27±6.6 years, 78.8% were male and 79.3% (168 people) were married. The mean scores of CDAS and WHOQOL-BREF were 11.60±8.2 and 64.66±10.8, respectively. The highest and lowest score of WHOQOL-BREF belonged to the dimensions of social relationships and mental health, respectively. There was a significant inverse correlation between CDAS and WHOQOL-BREF (P<0.001 and r = -0.656). Women had higher anxiety scores and lower quality of life than men. Individuals with a family member over 65 years of age or a member with a chronic illness had significantly higher mean anxiety scores and lower mean quality of life scores compared to other individuals.

The results of this study show that the quality of life of employees in the industrial sector increases with reducing their anxiety. Therefore, it is recommended that factory managers take necessary measures to identify and eliminate the causes of anxiety to increase the quality of life and productivity of employees.

Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is important, especially in healthcare settings with low HBV vaccination uptake and high prevalence of HBV among the general public. It is important for Health Care Workers (HCWs) to have adequate knowledge of PEP for HBV for effective adherence following occupational exposure. This study assessed the level of knowledge of PEP for HBV among HCWs.

 A cross-sectional study involving 174 HCWs from five facilities in the Greater Accra Region. The selection was by random sampling after stratification into six professional categories. A structured, pretested questionnaire was used to collect data. SPSS software was used to analyse data. Chi-square test was used to determine significance, ANOVA and logistic regression analysis were done.

Thirty three percent of the HCWs had knowledge scores of less than 50%, whereas only 27% had good knowledge of PEP for HBV. The average mean of knowledge score was 47.85 (CI=44.35-51.35). An analysis of variance identified a statistically significant difference between the scores obtained by the various cadres (P=0.01). A logistic regression analysis revealed that nurses and midwives had lower odds of having a good knowledge of PEP for HBV (AOR=0.4; 95% CI=0.1-0.9).

Respondents demonstrated inadequate knowledge of PEP for HBV in this study. In poor settings where HBV disease burden is high and HBV vaccination coverage among HCWs is suboptimal, good knowledge of PEP for HBV is recommended for effective adherence to PEP protocols among HCWs, who are at risk of exposure to HBV.

 Hearing thresholds at 3000 Hz are generally not measured in routine clinical audiometry. However, for purposes other than clinical diagnosis, the threshold at 3 kHz has many applications, in epidemiological studies in the field of occupational health and medicine, as well as in (medicolegal) quantification of physical impairment due to hearing loss, particularly noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). The present study addressed the validity of estimating, in the case of NIHL, the 3 kHz-audiometric thresholds by averaging the thresholds at 2 and 4 kHz. 

 All 200 investigated subjects (400 ears) had a well-documented noise exposure, moderate to severe NIHL, and underwent, as they were claiming for compensation, a detailed medicolegal audiological investigation, including beside pure tone audiometry, electrophysiological objective frequency-specific threshold definition using cortical evoked response audiometry (CERA) and auditory steady-state response (ASSR).

The study results showed a good correlation between the 2-4 kHz interpolation and the actual 3 kHz threshold; the error may be around 2 dB on average. However, in individual cases, the results demonstrated that the error due to interpolation exceeds 5 dB HL in about one-quarter of the cases. This error is predictable; the larger the 2- 4 KHz difference (which reflects the steepness of the left slope of the audiometric notch), the larger the error (on either side) made by interpolating.

For epidemiological studies with large amounts of data, the interpolated threshold (average of 2 and 4 KHz) may be considered as a valid estimate of the true value of the 3 KHz threshold. More caution is required in individual cases: the error due to interpolation exceeds 5 dB HL in about one-quarter of the cases, but this error is predictable.

There are several factors involved in creating job stress. Shift work can be considered one of these factors which affect sleep quality among the staff. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of job stress on the sleep quality of the healthcare personnel.

This was a descriptive-analytical study conducted in 2011-2012. Data collection tools consisted of demographic information; HSE job stress questionnaires and Pittsburgh sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Descriptive statistics, Chi-square and Anova tests, Spearman correlation, and SPSS software version 26 were used for data analysis. The significance level of the test was 5%.

The mean score of sleep quality was 7.18 ± 3.5 and work stress was 98.7 ± 12.14. 61.8% of nurses did not have good sleep quality. The results of a one-way analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of work stress in work shifts (P = 0.019). The results of the Spearman correlation test showed a significant and inverse correlation between work stress and sleep quality (r = -0.17 p = 0.001).

The results of this study showed that the employees' sleep quality affects their job stress, reduces their productivity and causes some problems for them; therefore, managers must heed the results of this research and schedule the shifts in such a way as to reduce job stress. They can also hold training sessions and workshops to regulate sleep patterns and manage stress in due course of time.

In this study, the implementation of the requirements of health, safety and environment management system with emphasis on payment management in contracting companies has been compared.

The current research is a cross-sectional study in which 200 persons were randomly chosen from a Krejcie and Morgan table as a sample (159 contractors of the gas company and 41 of the two contractors of the water and wastewater company). Two questions created by the researcher were included in the data gathering instrument. The first questionnaire included ten questions comparing HSE standards, while the second questionnaire had 28 questions comparing the two organizations' health, safety, and environmental indicators. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data.

The questionnaire's validity (qualitative content analysis) and reliability (Cronbach's alpha) were both validated as a consequence of the findings (0.879). Based on the findings, it was discovered that the Gas Organization's contracting companies implement the requirements of the health management system and safety better than the Water and Sewerage Organization of South Khorasan Province, and that the reason for this appropriate situation is the Gas Organization's emphasis on payment management (P<0.001).

The results showed that the implementation of health, safety, and environmental management system requirements in the contracting companies of the Gas Organization is better than the Water and Sewerage Organization of South Khorasan Province. There are various aspects at play, and one of the most significant in the correct circumstances is the gas company's concentration on payment management

Pool fire is a phenomenon caused by the leakage of flammable materials on the ground leading to serious hazards, irrespective of its consequences. The proximity and high volumes of chemicals in warehouses require that the characteristics of various materials in warehouses be taken into account for calculating the chain effects of the pool fire.

 One of the effective parameters in expanding the impact of the pool fire chain is heat flux value. There are different models for calculating and predicting it. In this study, two approaches of computational fluid dynamic (CFD), fire-driven fluid flow, fire dynamics simulator (FDS), and solid flame model were used to predict heat flux values.

In both models, the calculated heat flux was used to evaluate the effects on humans (first-degree burns, second-degree burns, and deaths) and the materials. The CFD results were compared with the results of the solid flame model, which indicated that there was little error in the predicted heat flux values.

The results of this study can be used to better understand the effects of pool fire on chemical warehouses, and provide appropriate control measures to prevent such accidents in warehouses.