Assessment of health hazards among waste pickers in Chittagong metropolitan city

Abstract

Background: Waste pickers mainly collect the waste and separate the waste like papers, glasses, plastics and other products which they found in the dump. Then they send the products for the recycling. As assessed 4, 00, 000 waste pickers used collect more than 10,000 tons of solid waste each day and recycling it for further use in Bangladesh. Though their contribution is great towards environmental sustainability and for enrich country‟s economy but due to work with garbage for a long time create health hazards such as physical, chemical and biological hazards for them. The aim of this study is to identify the risk factors for the health hazards among waste pickers and also increase the knowledge and importance of maintaining good practice among them while handling garbage and increasing the awareness among the waste pickers so that it could help to reduce health hazards. Methods: A cross sectional study was used which included a quantitative research methods and data was collected by using a semi-structured questionnaire. A total of 222 waste pickers from 18 years and above aged and working for at least one year were interviewed and before data collection written consent form was read out to the pickers for taking permission. And the data was analyzed by using SPSS. Results: In the study most of the participants are from 30 and below range. Most of them (46.4%) receive only primary education. And most of them (95.9%) claim their monthly incomes are not enough to run their family. 92.8%, 87.4% and 97.7% pickers don‟t have the availability of drinking water, toilet and special eating place respectively in their worksite. Only 33.8%, 7.7% were

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found to use globes and special shows respectively during work time. Few of them (36.0%, 46.9%) use disinfectants for washing hands and work clothes respectively. 41.4% of them are consuming alcohol. Moreover only 48.2% know about handling waste without proper protection can cause health risk. And only 27.9% know about medical waste related disease. It was also found that muscle tear, scratches/injuries, back pain, intestinal diseases, breathing trouble, skin diseases and exposure to health hazards are the most common health problems among the waste pickers in currently and last 12 months with high frequencies. And these health problems were found to have great association with poor knowledge. Waste pickers who had poor knowledge had 0.3 times (AOR=0.3, 95% CI: 0.1-0.7) more chance to have poor health status than the pickers who had good knowledge. Conclusion: From the result it is understandable that waste pickers used to have low earning, work without facilities in workplace, lack of knowledge on risk related with waste collection, also they don‟t have much knowledge on how to handle waste manually and by using safety tools. This entire knowledge gap is lead to have occupational health risks. And to reduce this work these work accidents and occupational disease it is necessary to arrange trainings which make the waste pickers capable for the work.