A cross sectional study to determine the health profile of brick kiln workers

Abstract

Background: Occupational hazards involving the respiratory system, musculoskeletal system, skin and eyes are very commonly seen in the workers involved in the brick kiln industry. This study was designed to assess health profile of the brick kiln workers and to discuss sociodemographic profile affecting their health.Methods: This was a cross sectional study. 420 workers falling into the eligibility criteria, were selected from the 65 brick kiln factories in the study area. Multi-stage cluster sampling method was used to select the brick kiln factories and the participants of the study. The responses given by the participants were entered in Microsoft Excel 2010 and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Chi Square test was used to determine the association between the morbidities and sociodemographic variables.Results: Mean age of the workers was 35.34±10.96 years. 96.7% of the respondents were suffering from some or the other complaints, while 3.3% were not suffering from any complaints. Addiction was seen in 37.9% of the participants. Musculoskeletal complaints were the most common complaints followed by respiratory and skin complaints.Conclusions: Health of workers is affected due to conditions they work under. The older age group had more respiratory, dermatological and ophthalmic complaints. The group of workers employed as bigaaris as well as those who were working for more than 10 years had more respiratory and dermatological complaints.

Traditional Brick Making, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts: A Case Study of Vhembe District, South Africa

“…This Study (n = 38)Kazi and Bote,[29] (n = 420) Das et al,[28] (n = 402) Sanjel et al,[30] (n = 400)…”

“…The result in this study is in congruent with the study carried out by Das et al [28] in Bangladesh, in which 60.7% of the respondents claimed to work more than 8 h daily (see Table 2). Kazi and Bote [29] described brick making as an unskilled, low paying job involving the use of strenuous physical labour for several hours. In addition, about 75% of the brick makers claim to produce all through the year except occasionally on rainy days.…”

“…Dust particles weaken the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of skin and lung cells, they as well exacerbate meningitis, fever, pain, allergies, and viral infections [33]. Excavation leaves the soil loose, hence prone to flooding during rainy season [29]. In addition, the loose soil could be carried by wind, resulting in deterioration of soil quality along the wind direction [2].…”

“…Das et al [28] likewise observed that none of the respondents in a similar study in Bangladesh had above Secondary education. Kazi and Bote [29] reported that brick making is a low paying job requiring no skill. Based on work experience in brick making, 28.9%, 34.2%, 13.2%, 5.3% and 18.4% were associated with experience levels of less than 1 year, 1-3 years, 4-6 years, 7-9 years and above 9 years respectively.…”

“…Other socio-economic impacts of brick making industry include deforestation, competition with other walling industries and water lodging [11,31,34]. Challenges encountered by the brick maker include poor wages, lack of medical care, unavailability of ablution facilities, absence of education for their children and unavailability of potable water [18,28,29,53].…”