Posterior assessment of occupational risks associated with work hardness based on workers’ subjective perception of their health

Abstract

Work hardness causes health impairments in workers of some occupations. Posterior assessment should be considered priority one in health risk analysis instead of relying solely on results obtained by prior assessment based on descriptions of working condition. This paper presents the results obtained by posterior occupational risk (OR) assessment associated with work hardness; the assessment is based on analyzing workers’ subjective perception of their health (workers employed at a bearing production were used as an example). A survey was accomplished within this study followed by analyzing subjective perception of one’s health. It gave an opportunity to accomplish quantitative posterior OR assessment (that considered both likelihood of diseases and their severity) at the group and individual levels. Work hardness creates unacceptable group health risks associated with diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (1.93•10-2–2.56•10-2), nervous system (4.03•10-2–6.77•10-2), genitourinary system (2.04•10-2–2.7•10-2) and cardio-vascular system (1.47•10-2–1.69•10-2). Such indicators as ‘weight of constantly lifted cargo and cargo moved by hand’ (35–58 %) and ‘uncomfortable working posture / working upright’ (29–54 %) make major contributions to the integral risk. Risk categories were adjusted at the individual level (considering parameters of the relationship that describe how likelihood of disease is influenced by work hardness, age and working records). This allowed establishing that OR was predominantly caused by diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (‘medium risk’ for 19–83 % of the workers and ‘high risk’ for 75–81 %), nervous system (‘high risk’ for 84–85 % and ‘extremely high risk’ for 15–16 % of the workers) and genitourinary system (‘moderate risk’ for 1 %, ‘medium risk’ for 8 %, and ‘high risk’ for 87 %). Occupational health risk assessment allowed identifying priority indicators of work hardness (‘weight of constantly lifted cargo and cargo moved by hand’ and ‘uncomfortable working posture / working upright’) and establishing proper scope of relevant prevention activities at the group and individual level.