Association between job strain (high demand-low control) and cardiovascular disease risk factors among petrochemical industry workers.

OBJECTIVE: One of the practical models for assessment of stressful working conditions due to job strain is "job demand and control" or Karasek's job strain model. This model explains how adverse physical and psychological effects including cardiovascular disease risk factors can be established due to high work demand. The aim was to investigate how certain cardiovascular risk factors including body mass index (BMI), heart rate, blood pressure, serum total cholesterol levels, and cigarette smoking are associated with job demand and control in workers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this cohort study, 500 subjects completed "job demand and control" questionnaires. Factor analysis method was used in order to specify the most important "job demand and control" questions. Health check-up records of the workers were applied to extract data about cardiovascular disease risk factors. Ultimately, hypothesis testing, based on Eta, was used to assess the relationship between separated working groups and cardiovascular risk factors (hypertension and serum total cholesterol level). RESULTS: A significant relationship was found between the job demand-control model and cardiovascular risk factors. In terms of chi-squared test results, the highest value was assessed for heart rate (Chi(2) = 145.078). The corresponding results for smoking and BMI were Chi(2) = 85.652 and Chi(2) = 30.941, respectively. Subsequently, Eta result for total cholesterol was 0.469, followed by hypertension equaling 0.684. Moreover, there was a significant difference between cardiovascular risk factors and job demand-control profiles among different working groups including the operational group, repairing group and servicing group. CONCLUSION: Job control and demand are significantly related to heart disease risk factors including hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and cigarette smoking.

Playground injuries in children.

BACKGROUND: Rapid urbanization and unplanned population development can be detrimental to the safety of citizens, with children being a particularly vulnerable social group. In this review, we assess childhood playground injuries and suggest safety mechanisms which could be incorporated into playground planning. METHODS: Inclusion criteria were "children" as the focus group, "playground" as the main field of study, and "unintentional injury" and "safety" as the concepts of study. The keywords used for the PubMed search were "playground", "children", and "injury". Initially we 182 articles. After screening according to inclusion criteria, 86 articles were found, and after reading the abstracts and then the full text, 14 articles were finally included for analysis. The papers reviewed included four case-control studies, three case studies, three descriptive studies, two interventional studies, one retrospective study, one cross-sectional study, and one systematic review. RESULTS: Playground-related fractures were the most common accidents among children, underscoring the importance of safety promotion and injury prevention in playgrounds, lowrisk equipment and playing hours (week days associated with higher risk), implementation of standards, preventing falls and fall-related fractures, and addressing concerns of parents about unsafe neighborhoods. With the exception of one study, all of the reviewed papers had not implemented any practical safety plan. Safe engineering approaches were also ignored. CONCLUSION: We recommend a systematic safety approach based on the "safety circle" which includes three main areas, ie, equipment, environment, and children.