Occupational Health: What Are the Common Risk Factors?

a) Acute health effects
Example 1My first example is regarding work in a saw mill.

A saw mill. © ColourboxHere the workers cut timber to get materials ready for building purposes. However, there are dangerous tools such as saws present in this working environment.

There are many other potential risk factors at different work places. Another example is that health personnel may develop infectious diseases during contact with patients with such diseases. A very serious example is the Ebola outbreaks. Ebola is a deadly disease where we have little treatment to offer our patients. During the Ebola outbreaks in 2014-2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a large number of deaths among health personnel. This is summarised in a report about the impact of the Ebola epidemic on the health workforce of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, covering the period from 1th January 2014 to 3th March 2015. Later, we have seen several new outbreaks, especially in DrCongo. The last report from DrC came in March 2020. Ebola is far more dangerous than for instance the Coronavirus we face in 2020, since it often causes deaths. However, the Coronavirus might be a huge problem as well, if it ends up with a pandemic, affecting very many persons -including many health personell.
815 health personnel died
due to confirmed/probable
Ebola disease in the period
from January 2014 to March 2015.

Last year, a truck filled with roses at a flower farm was ready to travel to the airport with the roses at the end of the day. One leader at the flower farm passed by, observing that some space was not filled up in this truck. He asked two women working there, to cut more roses from the green house, to fill in this space. There was not much time before the plane should leave, and things had to be done quickly. The women protested, because the green houses where the roses were growing had just been sprayed with pesticides, and no one should enter.
b) Chronic diseases at work
The types of risk factors described in the examples so far cause acute health effects, meaning they develop at the time of exposure at work or soon after. In working life, however, workers may also be exposed to factors that cause adverse health effects over longer periods of time. In occupational health we call these chronic diseases. One such factor is dust. Dust can be inhaled and reach the lungs and cause respiratory problems. Sometimes, these types of lung diseases do not develop until after years of exposure. This is the situation for coal miners for instance, like the ones you see in the photo. Inhaling coal dust over years may cause coal miners’ pneumoconiosis, a disease which at first will cause cough during work in this dust. At first this symptom may be considered as an acute health effect; the dust irritates the air ways. However, after some time, the cough may worsen and in addition serious problems in breathing may develop. This is a typical start of the pneumoconiosis; a chronic disease that we cannot cure. Workers with this disease may become invalided and unable to perform any further work. However, this is a disease we can prevent. If you are skilled in occupational health, you will know, for instance, that using water during drilling will reduce the dust in the air, and also that respiratory protective equipment exists, which can reduce the amount of dust exposure for the worker.
Occupational Health in Developing Countries

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