An ergonomic study of women workers in a woolen textile factory for identification of health-related problems.

The observational cross-sectional study conducted on a sample of 100 women workers who volunteered, outlines their cardio-respiratory and musculo-skeletal profile before, during and at end of work. In addition, information on their health status in general was collected in advance.Contrary to expectation, there was no significant change in respiratory function. However, the musculo-skeletal problems were found to be abundantly present with pain in 91% of the subjects. Region-wise mapping of pain revealed that postural pain in low back was present in 47% while in neck was 19%. Scapular muscles on the right side were involved in stabilizing shoulder, which never went overhead. On the contrary, left shoulder was raised as high (>90 degrees) in spinning action, while pulling thread. This muscle work involved trapezius, deltoid and triceps action concentrically in lifting and while coming to starting position slowly, eccentrically. There was no pause since the wheel continued to spin the thread continuously, unless a worker opted to stop the work. Accordingly, left wrist and hand were in holding contraction while the right wrist and hand holding the handle were also in a fixed position with wrist in flexion with supinated forearm. Though the overall job was light as per peak HR, there was pain due to fatigue and grip strength weakened by around 10%, at the end of the day's work. In conclusion, pain and fatigue were found to be the main problems for women in the spinning section of the small-scale industry under this study. Women have to take up dual responsibility of a full-time job as well as the domestic work. It was considered that ergonomic factors such as provision of a backrest and frequent rest periods could remediate the musculo-skeletal symptoms.

Occupational workload of fisherwomen in India.

A group of 60 fisherwomen, aged 20 to 50 yrs., were studied to evaluate their occupational workloads. Of the eight activities involved in fish handling, only four, viz., sorting, washing, drying, and selling, which are most frequently carried out by the fisherwomen, were selected. The heart rate responses and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were used as measures of occupational workload. Based on the findings, the occupational workload could be classified as "moderately heavy". A significant influence of age and body weight on the physiological workload was observed, being negatively correlated with age and positively with weight.

Aerobic capacity of urban women homemakers in Bombay.

Twenty-six healthy women homemakers residing in the metropolitan city of Bombay were studied on a treadmill and a cycle ergometer to determine their aerobic capacity (VO2 max) with a view to evaluating their cardio-respiratory fitness and ascertaining the job-demand-fitness-compatibility in household activities. The VO2 max was found to be significantly higher in treadmill experiments, i.e. 15% in absolute value and 18% in relative value, as compared with that obtained by cycle ergometry (p < 0.001). A much higher difference was observed in values derived from the two methods on the same subjects (i.e. 28% in absolute value and 31% in relative value). Thus, the VO2 max obtained from treadmill experiments may be regarded as the maximal aerobic power or the highest oxygen uptake that an individual can attain during exercise, which in the sample of the present study was recorded as 1.90 l min-1 (33.9 ml kg-1 min-1). The findings also revealed that age and body weight have a direct influence on VO2 max, which was found to be significantly correlated, positively with the latter and negatively with the former (p < 0.01 in both cases). The physiological job-demand of household activities seems to be compatible in relation to the VO2 max of the homemakers.

A rapid appraisal of occupational workload from a modified scale of perceived exertion.

A simple and rapid method of determining occupational workload among Indian women performing manual activities was developed based on the strong relationship between physiological responses and subjective feeling of exertion. A modified five point scale of perceived exertion, sequentially numbered 1 to 5, was created to simplify the complicated and time-consuming procedures using conventional methods of measuring energy expenditure, or even heart rate responses, during work of very short duration, especially in field situations. The scale denotes physiological workload: 1: very light; 2: light; 3: moderately heavy; 4: heavy; and 5: very heavy. A job-classification table based on energy expenditure and heart rate responses is also proposed, and different household activities such as grinding masalas, dish washing, sweeping, mopping, ironing, storing water, etc. have been graded accordingly.

HP, GC and PI polymorphisms in sixteen central Indian tribal populations.

HP, GC and PI polymorphisms have been typed on 16 Central Indian tribal populations with a total of 1658 individuals. The distribution of allele frequencies shows a statistically highly significant heterogeneity, which may be caused by several microevolutionary factors, such as genetic drift, social and geographic isolation. Some new variants were observed in both the GC system (GC 2Cmah) and in the PI system (PI Yori). The PI variants are more frequent and are found in most of the 16 populations under study whereas the GC variants are rather infrequent and restricted to only three populations.

Aerobic capacity of dock workers in Bombay.

The aerobic capacity (VO2max) of 61 healthy loaders from Bombay Docks actively engaged in heavy manual work of lifting and carrying of food grains bags was estimated by an extrapolation technique based on linear relationship between heart rate and oxygen uptake at different levels of physical work. The average VO2max was found to be 2572 plus or minus 54 ml (S.E.)/min.(STPD) or 46.6 plus or minus 0.96 (S.E.) ml.min.-1 kg-1 (STPD) which is high in many cases when compared to the values reported by other Indian workers among different occupational groups. The possible reasons are discussed. The results further reveal that the VO2max is negatively correlated with age and that this relationship is more pronounced with subjects, aged 31-49 years. The gradual fall in aerobic capacity was observed beyond 33 years of age.