BACKGROUND: Agricultural labor-intensive activities have been threatened by COVID-19. Wearing a face mask has been introduced as one of the personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce COVID-19 risk. OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to investigate the safety behavior of urban green space workers around wearing a face mask in the time of COVID-19 before vaccination. METHODS: The personal and safety backgrounds of 61 male participants were collected using a designed questionnaire. The nonparametric correlation coefficient of Spearman and logistic regressions were used to investigate the relationships among variables. RESULTS: Above one-third of workers (37.7%) got COVID-19 in the past year. Although all of the participants were aware of wearing a face mask is a protocol against COVID-19, only about half of them (50.8%) completely wear face mask at work. Non-smoking participants were 5.5 times more likely to influence their personal preference on wearing the mask. CONCLUSION: Safety attitude may be a key variable in relation to the factors that influence the wearing face mask. The causes of face mask-wearing during a pandemic such as COVID-19 as well as safety attitudes may be behind the factors studied in this study. Although some significant linkages were found, they were not enough to conclude a comprehensive action program. This concern is still open to discovering factors that influence wearing face mask.

BACKGROUND: Many agricultural activities excessively need to the human power and are associated with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) yet. Leafy vegetable cultivation (LVC) is one of these. OBJECTIVE: The postural workload, body discomfort, and explainable linkage between these among Iranian wintry LVC workers were investigated. METHODS: Postures and body discomfort were evaluated using Ovako working posture analyzing system (OWAS) and a body map, respectively. The explainable body discomforts by working postures for each body region were descriptively discussed using some of the literature. RESULTS: Considering the maximum MSD risk value of 400%, irrigation and manual harvesting had the highest MSD risks with index risks of 313% and 305% respectively. Low back discomfort was the most common body discomfort in LVC which was reported for the operations of moldboard plowing, disking, manure application, chemical broadcasting, spraying, and manual harvesting. LVC operations seemed to rely heavily on the use of low back and shoulders. Bent and/or twist postures were the most common postures for the back. CONCLUSIONS: Almost all the body discomforts were explained by awkward postures shown by postural workload analysis. Therefore, the working posture analysis results may be reliable and utilized in future decisions around ergonomic interventions. Future studies may be conducted to investigate the simple and inexpensive ergonomic interventions to mitigate MSD risks.

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BACKGROUND: Despite mechanization development, leafy vegetable cultivation (LVC), as a labor-intensive activity in both developed and developing countries, still suffers from heavy physical activities. OBJECTIVE: The present study evaluated the human physiological strains of LVC’s workers to identify relationships among contributing factors affecting human physiological strains. METHODS: Thirty male workers were included in this study. Working heart rate (HR) was measured using a heart rate sensor during various operations. The time taken to treat a known area was measured using a stopwatch to calculate work speed (or field capacity (FC)) for each operation. Pearson correlation coefficient and linear regression were used to investigate the relationships among HR, heart rate ratio, FC and mechanization status (MS), and human energy expenditure rate and total energy expenditure per unit area. RESULTS: The highest HR was at seedbed preparing (120.1 beats/min) and lowest at manual harvesting (87.8 beats/min). Manual hoe-used operations (seedbed preparing, manure application and irrigating) were demonstrated as the critical operations concerning physiological strains. The operations performed by machine power corresponded to a high FC. CONCLUSIONS: Variables influencing the area treating speed (i.e. MS and FC) are negatively linked to the human energy consumed per unit area and variable changed in time unit (i.e. HR) was positively linked to the human energy expenditure speed.

Background and Objectives:Fruit harvesting operation, one of the most important operations related to date palm production, is performed manually. Manual date palm harvest suffers from frequent occupational risk factors due to excessive need of physical work resulting in work related illness and productivity reduction. Methods:Present study was undertaken with recruiting twenty three harvest workers to evaluate and compare upper-trunk (consisting of work tasks: climbing, cutting the bunch, and descending) and bottom-trunk operations regarding physiological (heart rate and heart rate ratio) and physical (body pain) strains to identify onerous critical operations to address with simple and inexpensive interventions by future attempts. Results:Upper trunk operation posed a more physiological strain as heart rate (29.4%) and heart rate ratio (177.8%) higher than bottom trunk operation. Body pain was self-reported by the upper trunk workers in low back and sole, and by lower trunk workers in low back. Conclusion:The upper trunk operation was the onerous critical operation in manual date palm harvest, and climbing was the most critical work task in upper trunk operation. Climbing causes the highest physiological strain because workers moved in converse of gravity force, whereas descending led to lowest one because of moving in the similar direction with gravity.