Physiological Changes And Clinical Findings In Females Textile Factory Workers

, Saad Jone Hamza; , Amjed Hassan Abbas; , Samir Sawadi Hamoud

	Physiological Changes And Clinical Findings In Females Textile Factory Workers
Al-Qadisiah Medical Journal
Article 1, Volume 12, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 65-70 PDF (0 K)
Authors
Saad Jone Hamza; Amjed Hassan Abbas; Samir Sawadi Hamoud
Abstract
About 60 million people worldwide work in the textile or clothing industry. The conditions of working and the dust that produced from processing of cotton in industries can cause many morbidities to the health of workers. Many recent studies have found a high ratio of chronic diseases especially chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in those workers. This study was done to assess the effect of working in textile industry from physiological and clinical points of view. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 75 randomly selected textile factory workers, all subjects were females. Information was collected through interview, in addition to physical examination and some needed investigations were performed including: packed cell volume (PCV),white blood cell count (WBC), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), random blood sugar (RBS), blood urea (Bur), serum creatinine (Scr), serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST), serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP), electrocardiography (ECG), echocardiography, chest x-ray (CXR) and general urine examination (GUE), in addition to pulmonary function tests (PFTs) using portable medical spirometer. The results of this study was shown that the mean duration of exposure of workers to cotton dust was 15.67±4.86 years, the higher percentage of workers had low back pain (LBP) (85%), while lower percentage of them had contact dermatitis (27%), urinary tract infection (23%), while 2% of workers had left ventricular hypertrophy as revealed by ECG and echocardiography. Regarding the mean values of blood parameters, the study showed no significant difference between workers and control groups apart from ESR changes (26.8 ± 15.95 vs. 8.3 ± 3.3 with P ≤ 0.05). Regarding the respiratory findings, the highest percentage of workers complained from shortness of breath (45.3%), some of them had no symptoms (17.3%), severity of symptoms was moderate restriction in most workers (24%), the study also showed negative non-significant relation between duration of exposure and severity of respiratory impairment (r = 0.1, P= 0.2). In conclusion; this study provides evidence of a strong relationship between exposure to cotton dust and respiratory impairments, also there was a considerable percentage of workers had muscular and dermatological problems, despite no important effects on the hematological parameters except ESR. .
Keywords
Textile; cotton dust; workers

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