Abstract
Municipal solid waste workers are exposed to a number of pathogens (bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites and cysts), toxic substances, chemicals that come from the waste itself and from its decomposition. While standards and norms for handling municipal solid waste in industrialized countries have reduced occupational and environmental impacts significantly, the risk levels are still very high in most developing countries including Ethiopia because of inadequate understanding of the magnitude of the problem. Despite the severity of occupational health hazards encounter by solid waste collectors their provision, knowledge and usage of personnel protective equipment is low and there is no adequate and credible evidence on occupational health risks of solid waste collectors in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of solid waste collectors towards prevention of occupational health hazards in Lideta sub-city in Ethiopia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among four hundred six solid waste collectors for this work. The data was collected by using semi-structured questionnaire and observational checklist, which was completed from December 2014 to February 2015. The data was entered into epi info version 3.5.1 and exported to SPSS 20 version for analysis. Multiple logistic regression analysis had been performed. Adjusted odds ratio with confidence interval had been computed to see the presence of association between the dependent and selected independent variables. The results on this finding were reported using different descriptive statistics. The response rate of this study was 94.8%. Female respondents accounted 69.7%. The mean age of the study subjects was 35 years, which varied from 17 to 65 years. About 60.8% of the study participants had satisfactory knowledge on preventing occupational health risks associated with solid waste handling. Most (75.9%) of the solid waste collectors had favorable attitude while only 37.2% of them had safe practice on preventing occupational health hazards. As compared to workers who were satisfied on their job, odds of having safe occupational health practice were 2.8 higher (AOR = 2.8, 95% CI: 1.84 - 4.26). The knowledge and attitudes of workers about prevention of occupational health hazards were moderate but the magnitude of having safe occupational health practice was very low. So, implementation of basic occupational health services with provision of personal protective equipment’s and supervising waste handlers on appropriate utilization is advisable.
Highlights
Municipal solid waste (MSW) handling and disposal is a growing environmental and public health concern
Municipal solid waste workers are exposed to a number of pathogens, toxic substances, chemicals that come from the waste itself and from its decomposition, as well as vehicle exhaust fumes, noise, extreme temperatures and ultraviolet radiation (S. 2005)
At each zone one association is assigned to work on solid waste collection and there were a total of 428 solid waste collectors in the sub-city and about 406 of them were considered for analysis in this study while the remaining 22 of them were not considered for analysis
Summary
Municipal solid waste (MSW) handling and disposal is a growing environmental and public health concern. In low income countries solid waste collectors are likely to have a low socio-economic status and the medical problems of these workers are further compounded by various socio-economic factors such as poverty, lack of education, poor housing conditions and poor diet. Farther more, these groups of workers are exposed directly and without adequate protection to MSW, they are more susceptible to occupational hazards (Sarkar 2003)
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