survey on the relation between satus of the environmental health and health of the carpet workers in rural of Mehriz-Yazd Iran [2007]

ABSTRACT

Carpet industry is one of the most important traditional handicraft in IRAN. Considering the long history of carpet industry in Iran and the existence of working a lot of men and women in the villages of Iran in this field, carpet industry as can be regarded a complementary industry for farming so paying attention to the health of worekers in the field can play an important role in socio economic development of our villages. This descriptive cross- sectional study was conducted on 2200 carpet handicrafters in Mehryz, Yazd, Iran, selected through census. The relevant questionnaire was filled out by occupational health specialists and intern students of medicine via inspection, clinical examination and interviewing. Results:44.4% of the target group were between 15-24 years of age. 78.5% of the married subjects had 5 children or lower and 85.2% of them had different levels of literacy. 14.7% had a history of psychologic disorders; 4.6% ophthalmologic disorders, 4.5% endocrine disorders and 19.8% had history of infectious diseases. Results: indicated that there was a significant relationship between different disorders of mind, skin, heart, muscle, and skeleton with temperature of the mind, handicrafters working environment [P<0.05]. As we expected pulmonary disease was less prevalent among the subjects who possessed a better and more appropriate ventilating system for their morking place after correlation analysis, of the data it was revealed that with increasing the working years, the subjects' visual capacity also decreased. In addition, the working hours decreased in relation to the subjects' increase in blood pressure. The result of the study showed that some diseases like pulmonary and ocular diseases is high in carpet workers.The diseases in the subjects with inappropriate working place was higher than others. So it is nesseary today more attention to health of the carpet workers and their working places