Features of occupational pathology with varying experience in arctic enterprise workers

Abstract

Introduction. Issues of protecting and strengthening the health of the working population are among the most important problems of modern occupational medicine and healthcare as a whole. The aim of the study was to establish the causes for the development, structure and prevalence of occupational pathology in the Arctic enterprise workers with varying lengths of employment. Materials and methods. We studied data on 8609 newly diagnosed occupational diseases registered in 6833 employees of enterprises in the Arctic zone of Russia in 2007-2018. Results. It has been established that occupational health disorders that develop in the first 10 years and in later periods of work have significant differences. Earlier forms of occupational pathology are relatively more often formed in women (25.0%), younger people (46.5 ± 0.6 years), health care workers (7.1%), and under acceptable working conditions (9.0%).A specific feature of their development is the more frequent exposure to chemical (25.0%) and biological factors (6.1%) due to imperfection of sanitary installations (7.1%), occupational contact with an infectious agent (3.8%), and inappropriate use of personal protective equipment (3.3%). Intoxications, especially their acute forms, are of greater importance (9.9%) in the structure of occupational pathology of these workers. Chemical and biological factors have been shown to play greater role in the development of health disorders in workers with an experience of up to 10 years, while vibration (hand-arm and whole-body) and aerosols of mainly fibrogenic effect were more important as causative factors in workers with an experience of 11-30 years, and noise - in workers with an experience of more than 30 years. With an experience of less than 10 years, 57.1% of health problems were established as a result of independent requests for medical assistance by workers, while with an experience of more than 10 years 53.0% -60.5% of diseases were diagnosed for the first time as a result of periodic medical examinations. Conclusions. It is necessary to improve the prevention of occupational pathology in the early years of experience, especially among the workers exposed to chemical and biological harmful production factors.