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Prevalence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among the Brick Field Workers of West Bengal, India Banibrata Das MSc, PhD
a
a
Department of Physiology, South Calcutta Girls’ College , University of Calcutta , Kolkata , India Accepted author version posted online: 08 Mar 2013.Published online: 05 Feb 2014.
Click for updates To cite this article: Banibrata Das MSc, PhD (2014) Prevalence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among the Brick Field Workers of West Bengal, India, Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 69:4, 231-240, DOI: 10.1080/19338244.2013.771249 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19338244.2013.771249
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
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Prevalence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among the Brick Field Workers of West Bengal, India Banibrata Das, MSc, PhD
ABSTRACT. Brick field industry is one of the most important and oldest industries in India, where millions of workers suffered from work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The main aim of the present investigation was to assess the prevalence of WMSDs among brick field workers. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 216 brick field workers. A modified Nordic questionnaire was applied among them. In brick making industry, the workers adopt different unfavorable actions, such as frequent bending; bending and twisting of the body; and working above shoulder height, which may lead to severe pain in different parts of the body, especially lower back (brick carriers: 90%; moulders: 92%; fireman: 75%; stackers: 88%) and neck (brick carriers: 89%; moulders: 88%; fireman: 54%; stackers: 72%), It was concluded from the study that health of the brick field workers was highly affected due to working in different awkward postures for long periods. KEYWORDS: brick field workers, discomfort, Nordic questionnaire, WMSDs
W
ork-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are a worldwide concern present both in industrialized and industrially developing countries. WMSDs have been found to be associated with numerous occupational “risk factors,” including physical work load factors such as force, posture, movement, and vibration,1–3 psychosocial stressors,4–6 and individual factors .7 The level of exposure to physical workload can be normally assessed with respect to intensity (or magnitude), repetitiveness, and duration. WMSDs are a range of inflammatory and degenerative diseases resulting from forceful, repetitive, and long-duration jobs resulting in pain/discomfort and functional impairment and may affect body’s soft tissues, tendons, tendon sheaths, muscles, nerves of hands, wrists, elbow, shoulder, neck, and low back.8 Among such disorders pain of neck, shoulders
and low back cause long periods of disability and sick leave.9 WMSDs exacerbate due to the nature of the job but is not the sole causation effect of the job; other factors include force, repetitiveness, duration, and psychosocial factors.10 Brick field industries are one of the largest and oldest industries in India, in which millions of skilled and unskilled workers from all over the country make their livelihood. In brick manufacturing industry, the brick field workers have to perform various types of hard and strenuous work that leads to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) in the different parts of the body. Working with heavy load in an awkward posture for long duration leads to musculoskeletal problem and different occupational health problems among brick field workers. In brick fields, there are mainly 4 types of brick field workers (brick carriers, brick moulders, brick fireman, and brick stackers), who are performing different types of heavy
Banibrata Das is with the Department of Physiology, South Calcutta Girls’ College, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India. 2014, Vol. 69, No. 4
231
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
manual material handling (MMH) tasks. These are several steps by which the brick manufacturing was done. The steps are (a) cutting the mud with spade; (b) carrying the mud; (c) mud is inserted into the dice in the squatting posture, particular amount of mud were taken by the workers who put it into the dice, and extra mud is removed by hand; (d) lifting the dice upward and turning down towards the ground forcefully; (e) stack bricks loading on head one by one; (f) carrying the bricks on heading from stacking area to kiln; (g) unloading the green bricks on the kiln top; (h) setting bricks on kiln; (i) after firing, unloading of produced bricks from the kiln; and (j) after firing, carrying brick back to the place of storage. Brick carriers generally cut the mud with spade, carry the mud, and after firing of green bricks, carry brick back to the place of storage. Whereas brick moulders insert mud in the dice in the squatting posture, particular amount of mud were taken by the workers and put into the dice, and extra mud is removed by the hand. Brick fireman generally arranges or sets the bricks for burn in a kiln and unloads the green bricks on the kiln top. In informal sectors, these workers generally are recruited as temporarily and seasonal basis and thus they are neither trained nor sufficiently experienced. Therefore, they do not have any previous knowledge about unsafe acts and hazards related to this work, or they simply ignore the safe working process, as also seen among the female laborers of India.11 The workers are recruited by employers on a seasonal basis, mainly from November to April. Brick field workers in informal sectors of India suffer from severe work-related musculoskeletal disorders due to awkward postures, prolonged duration of work, heavy physical work, static work postures, frequent bending and twisting, lifting, pushing and pulling, repetitive work, and psychosocial stress. Trevelyan and Haslam12identified both upper limb and low back problems among the handmade brick manufacturing workers especially concentrated on moulding department where clay is shaped into bricks. The main objectives of this investigation are to determine WMSDs among brick field workers. METHODS Study population A cross-sectional study was conducted on 216 brick field workers (104 male and 112 female) from 12 brick fields, working in a selected brick field unit of Bhadrakali in Hooghly District, which was situated in the side of the Hooghly River. This brick field unit was selected randomly from the surrounding area. The work was carried out in all the selected brick field units, the same questionnaire was administered among all the brick field workers in different brick field units, and the equipments used in each of the factories were more or less similar. There are 2 groups of workers, male and female (aged 21 to 52 years), in brick field units, whose main tasks are making and carrying bricks. There are 232
no subjects who work for less than 1 month in the brick fields. The one brick field workers only perform their own category of work; they don’t interfere in the other category of works or no workers have an experience of more than one job title. The height and weight of the brick field workers were measured by an anthropometer and weighing machine, respectively. The body mass index (BMI)13 of all the subjects was also computed. Before conducting the survey, a consent was taken from brick field owners as well as each individual subjects. Written permission on the project was obtained from Institutional Human Ethical Clearance Committee according to the Indian Council of Medical Research Guidelines. Questionnaire study A modified Nordic musculoskeletal disorder questionnaire14 was applied that included a number of objective questions with multiple-choice responses. In this study, the above questionnaire has been modified wherein the feeling of discomfort of the brick field workers at different times (during work, after work, during sleep at night, and during 24 hours after work) has been incorporated to make the study more authentic and precise. The questionnaire included questions such as age, duration of occupation as a worker, weight of carried loads, and daily working hours. This questionnaire also includes type of work and about affected body parts: neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist/hand, upper back, lumbar, one or both hips/thighs, one or both knees, and one or both ankle/feet among the brick field workers. Data on daily working hours were obtained by the time spent in the workplace. Musculoskeletal complaint was defined as pain or discomfort experienced in soft tissue of the different body regions, which had occurred at least 2 to 3 workdays during the past week or 12 months. Noted pain has improved on the weekends, vacations, and holidays. All medical records and questionnaire filling were supervised by the research team. Discomfort level scale Discomfort level scale is a 10-point scale for discomfort and pain sensation, where 1 represents just noticeable pain, 5 represents moderate pain, and 10 represents intolerable pain (Figure 1). This scale was used for identifying the discomfort level of the workers in their different postures. The intensity of pain or discomfort was measured by utilizing the body part discomfort (BPD) scale.15 Posture analysis The analysis of different working postures of the brick field workers was carried out with the rapid entire body assessment (REBA) method. The REBA method was proposed as a means to assess posture for risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders,16 to consider critical tasks of a job, and for each task, to assess the posture factors by assigning a score to each region. Later on, stick diagrams were drawn Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
Fig. 1. Discomfort feeling (pain) at different body parts among the brick field workers.
from freeze-frame video records and eventually subjected to analysis. The most frequent postures adopted by the workers were taken into consideration. Data analysis A total of 216 brick field workers responded in the study. Data were analyzed by using the statistical package Primer of Biostatistics (5.0.msi, msi version = 1.20.1827.0; McGrawHill). Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) were used to summarize the data. Cross-tabulations were done to get the frequency and percentages of the subcategories. RESULTS The sociodemographic characteristics of the brick field workers are shown in Table 1. It was observed that the subjects of brick carriers, brick moulders, brick fireman and brick stacker works for 7, 6, 5, and 6 days in a week, respectively. Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents who had WRMSDs are shown in Table 2. Ninety percent (n = 148) of respondents who reported WRMSDs were brick field workers. The daily work schedule including the mean duration of work as well as the number of working days in a week is also represented in Table 3. From the analysis of working postures (Table 4), it was found that most of the working postures are of risk and high risk and require immediate corrective measures, as indicated by the REBA analysis (by comparing the REBA score with REBA risk level). These types of working postures are fre2014, Vol. 69, No. 4
quently adopted by the brick field workers, and often, they suffer from musculoskeletal complaints in the upper extremities and lower back pain. Questionnaire study revealed that all the brick field workers complained of discomfort at different parts of the body (Figure 1). This study shows that among the body parts of brick field workers, lower back is the most affected among all groups (brick carriers, brick moulders, brick fireman, brick stackers) of brick field workers. This study shows that most of the brick field workers suffered from low back pain: 90% (brick carriers), 92% (brick moulders), 75% (brick fireman), and 88% (brick stackers). Neck is the main part of the upper extremities that was affected most among brick field workers: 89% (brick carriers), 88% (brick moulders), 54% (brick fireman), and 72% (brick stackers) suffered from neck pain. Hand is the part of the body that was affected second most among the brick field workers: 62% (brick carriers), 71% (brick moulders), 38% (brick fireman), and 52% (brick stackers) suffered from hand pain during work. Head is the most affected part among the brick carriers: 92% brick carriers suffered from severe pain in their heads due to carrying heavy loads in their head, whereas 85% brick moulders suffered from pain in their knees due to working in kneeling posture for a prolonged period of time. Among the different types of discomfort feeling (Figure 2), pain is the predominant types of discomfort feeling in which all types of brick field workers suffered most: 94% (brick carriers), 92% (brick moulders), 76% (brick fireman), and 88% (brick stackers) suffered from pain, whereas 78% (brick 233
Table 1.—-Demographic Characteristics of the Brick Field Workers (N = 216)
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
Variable Gender Male Female Age group in years 21–30 31–40 41–50 >50 BMI range, kg/m2 18.5–24.9 25–29.9 ≥30 Literacy level Illiterate Primary school High school Degree Marital status Unmarried Married Widowed/Divorced Years of experience of work 1–5 years 6–10 years 11–15 years 16–20 years >20 years Income in a week 800 per week 1000 per week 1200 per week Duration of work 50 11 BMI range, kg/m2 18.5–24.9 41 25–29.9 82 ≥30 25 Literacy level Illiterate 62 Primary school 75 High school 11 Degree Nil Years of experience of work 1–5 years 20 6–10 years 66 11–15 years 47 16–20 years 15 >20 years 0 Duration of work 50 BMI range, kg/m2 18.5–24.9 25–29.9 ≥30 Literacy level Illiterate Primary school High school Degree
.025 37 58 42 11
59.7% 65.2% 77.8% 100%
25 31 12 00
40.3% 34.8% 22.2% 0.0%
41 82 25
66.1 68.9 100
21 37 00
33.9 31.1 0.00
62 75
66.7 69.4
31 33
33.3 30.6
11
73.3 0
04 26.7 0.0 00 0.0 (Continued on next page)
.004
.839
Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health
Table 2.—-Characteristics of Brick Field Workers Who Reported WRMSDs (n = 148) and Their Comparison With Those Who Did Not Report WRMSDs (n = 68) (Continued) WRMSDs present Variable
p Number Percentage Number Percentage value
Duration of work
Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vaeh20
Prevalence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among the Brick Field Workers of West Bengal, India Banibrata Das MSc, PhD
a
a
Department of Physiology, South Calcutta Girls’ College , University of Calcutta , Kolkata , India Accepted author version posted online: 08 Mar 2013.Published online: 05 Feb 2014.
Click for updates To cite this article: Banibrata Das MSc, PhD (2014) Prevalence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among the Brick Field Workers of West Bengal, India, Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 69:4, 231-240, DOI: 10.1080/19338244.2013.771249 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19338244.2013.771249
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, Vol. 69, No. 4, 2014 C 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Copyright
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
Prevalence of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among the Brick Field Workers of West Bengal, India Banibrata Das, MSc, PhD
ABSTRACT. Brick field industry is one of the most important and oldest industries in India, where millions of workers suffered from work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). The main aim of the present investigation was to assess the prevalence of WMSDs among brick field workers. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 216 brick field workers. A modified Nordic questionnaire was applied among them. In brick making industry, the workers adopt different unfavorable actions, such as frequent bending; bending and twisting of the body; and working above shoulder height, which may lead to severe pain in different parts of the body, especially lower back (brick carriers: 90%; moulders: 92%; fireman: 75%; stackers: 88%) and neck (brick carriers: 89%; moulders: 88%; fireman: 54%; stackers: 72%), It was concluded from the study that health of the brick field workers was highly affected due to working in different awkward postures for long periods. KEYWORDS: brick field workers, discomfort, Nordic questionnaire, WMSDs
W
ork-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are a worldwide concern present both in industrialized and industrially developing countries. WMSDs have been found to be associated with numerous occupational “risk factors,” including physical work load factors such as force, posture, movement, and vibration,1–3 psychosocial stressors,4–6 and individual factors .7 The level of exposure to physical workload can be normally assessed with respect to intensity (or magnitude), repetitiveness, and duration. WMSDs are a range of inflammatory and degenerative diseases resulting from forceful, repetitive, and long-duration jobs resulting in pain/discomfort and functional impairment and may affect body’s soft tissues, tendons, tendon sheaths, muscles, nerves of hands, wrists, elbow, shoulder, neck, and low back.8 Among such disorders pain of neck, shoulders
and low back cause long periods of disability and sick leave.9 WMSDs exacerbate due to the nature of the job but is not the sole causation effect of the job; other factors include force, repetitiveness, duration, and psychosocial factors.10 Brick field industries are one of the largest and oldest industries in India, in which millions of skilled and unskilled workers from all over the country make their livelihood. In brick manufacturing industry, the brick field workers have to perform various types of hard and strenuous work that leads to work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) in the different parts of the body. Working with heavy load in an awkward posture for long duration leads to musculoskeletal problem and different occupational health problems among brick field workers. In brick fields, there are mainly 4 types of brick field workers (brick carriers, brick moulders, brick fireman, and brick stackers), who are performing different types of heavy
Banibrata Das is with the Department of Physiology, South Calcutta Girls’ College, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India. 2014, Vol. 69, No. 4
231
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
manual material handling (MMH) tasks. These are several steps by which the brick manufacturing was done. The steps are (a) cutting the mud with spade; (b) carrying the mud; (c) mud is inserted into the dice in the squatting posture, particular amount of mud were taken by the workers who put it into the dice, and extra mud is removed by hand; (d) lifting the dice upward and turning down towards the ground forcefully; (e) stack bricks loading on head one by one; (f) carrying the bricks on heading from stacking area to kiln; (g) unloading the green bricks on the kiln top; (h) setting bricks on kiln; (i) after firing, unloading of produced bricks from the kiln; and (j) after firing, carrying brick back to the place of storage. Brick carriers generally cut the mud with spade, carry the mud, and after firing of green bricks, carry brick back to the place of storage. Whereas brick moulders insert mud in the dice in the squatting posture, particular amount of mud were taken by the workers and put into the dice, and extra mud is removed by the hand. Brick fireman generally arranges or sets the bricks for burn in a kiln and unloads the green bricks on the kiln top. In informal sectors, these workers generally are recruited as temporarily and seasonal basis and thus they are neither trained nor sufficiently experienced. Therefore, they do not have any previous knowledge about unsafe acts and hazards related to this work, or they simply ignore the safe working process, as also seen among the female laborers of India.11 The workers are recruited by employers on a seasonal basis, mainly from November to April. Brick field workers in informal sectors of India suffer from severe work-related musculoskeletal disorders due to awkward postures, prolonged duration of work, heavy physical work, static work postures, frequent bending and twisting, lifting, pushing and pulling, repetitive work, and psychosocial stress. Trevelyan and Haslam12identified both upper limb and low back problems among the handmade brick manufacturing workers especially concentrated on moulding department where clay is shaped into bricks. The main objectives of this investigation are to determine WMSDs among brick field workers. METHODS Study population A cross-sectional study was conducted on 216 brick field workers (104 male and 112 female) from 12 brick fields, working in a selected brick field unit of Bhadrakali in Hooghly District, which was situated in the side of the Hooghly River. This brick field unit was selected randomly from the surrounding area. The work was carried out in all the selected brick field units, the same questionnaire was administered among all the brick field workers in different brick field units, and the equipments used in each of the factories were more or less similar. There are 2 groups of workers, male and female (aged 21 to 52 years), in brick field units, whose main tasks are making and carrying bricks. There are 232
no subjects who work for less than 1 month in the brick fields. The one brick field workers only perform their own category of work; they don’t interfere in the other category of works or no workers have an experience of more than one job title. The height and weight of the brick field workers were measured by an anthropometer and weighing machine, respectively. The body mass index (BMI)13 of all the subjects was also computed. Before conducting the survey, a consent was taken from brick field owners as well as each individual subjects. Written permission on the project was obtained from Institutional Human Ethical Clearance Committee according to the Indian Council of Medical Research Guidelines. Questionnaire study A modified Nordic musculoskeletal disorder questionnaire14 was applied that included a number of objective questions with multiple-choice responses. In this study, the above questionnaire has been modified wherein the feeling of discomfort of the brick field workers at different times (during work, after work, during sleep at night, and during 24 hours after work) has been incorporated to make the study more authentic and precise. The questionnaire included questions such as age, duration of occupation as a worker, weight of carried loads, and daily working hours. This questionnaire also includes type of work and about affected body parts: neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist/hand, upper back, lumbar, one or both hips/thighs, one or both knees, and one or both ankle/feet among the brick field workers. Data on daily working hours were obtained by the time spent in the workplace. Musculoskeletal complaint was defined as pain or discomfort experienced in soft tissue of the different body regions, which had occurred at least 2 to 3 workdays during the past week or 12 months. Noted pain has improved on the weekends, vacations, and holidays. All medical records and questionnaire filling were supervised by the research team. Discomfort level scale Discomfort level scale is a 10-point scale for discomfort and pain sensation, where 1 represents just noticeable pain, 5 represents moderate pain, and 10 represents intolerable pain (Figure 1). This scale was used for identifying the discomfort level of the workers in their different postures. The intensity of pain or discomfort was measured by utilizing the body part discomfort (BPD) scale.15 Posture analysis The analysis of different working postures of the brick field workers was carried out with the rapid entire body assessment (REBA) method. The REBA method was proposed as a means to assess posture for risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders,16 to consider critical tasks of a job, and for each task, to assess the posture factors by assigning a score to each region. Later on, stick diagrams were drawn Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
Fig. 1. Discomfort feeling (pain) at different body parts among the brick field workers.
from freeze-frame video records and eventually subjected to analysis. The most frequent postures adopted by the workers were taken into consideration. Data analysis A total of 216 brick field workers responded in the study. Data were analyzed by using the statistical package Primer of Biostatistics (5.0.msi, msi version = 1.20.1827.0; McGrawHill). Descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) were used to summarize the data. Cross-tabulations were done to get the frequency and percentages of the subcategories. RESULTS The sociodemographic characteristics of the brick field workers are shown in Table 1. It was observed that the subjects of brick carriers, brick moulders, brick fireman and brick stacker works for 7, 6, 5, and 6 days in a week, respectively. Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of respondents who had WRMSDs are shown in Table 2. Ninety percent (n = 148) of respondents who reported WRMSDs were brick field workers. The daily work schedule including the mean duration of work as well as the number of working days in a week is also represented in Table 3. From the analysis of working postures (Table 4), it was found that most of the working postures are of risk and high risk and require immediate corrective measures, as indicated by the REBA analysis (by comparing the REBA score with REBA risk level). These types of working postures are fre2014, Vol. 69, No. 4
quently adopted by the brick field workers, and often, they suffer from musculoskeletal complaints in the upper extremities and lower back pain. Questionnaire study revealed that all the brick field workers complained of discomfort at different parts of the body (Figure 1). This study shows that among the body parts of brick field workers, lower back is the most affected among all groups (brick carriers, brick moulders, brick fireman, brick stackers) of brick field workers. This study shows that most of the brick field workers suffered from low back pain: 90% (brick carriers), 92% (brick moulders), 75% (brick fireman), and 88% (brick stackers). Neck is the main part of the upper extremities that was affected most among brick field workers: 89% (brick carriers), 88% (brick moulders), 54% (brick fireman), and 72% (brick stackers) suffered from neck pain. Hand is the part of the body that was affected second most among the brick field workers: 62% (brick carriers), 71% (brick moulders), 38% (brick fireman), and 52% (brick stackers) suffered from hand pain during work. Head is the most affected part among the brick carriers: 92% brick carriers suffered from severe pain in their heads due to carrying heavy loads in their head, whereas 85% brick moulders suffered from pain in their knees due to working in kneeling posture for a prolonged period of time. Among the different types of discomfort feeling (Figure 2), pain is the predominant types of discomfort feeling in which all types of brick field workers suffered most: 94% (brick carriers), 92% (brick moulders), 76% (brick fireman), and 88% (brick stackers) suffered from pain, whereas 78% (brick 233
Table 1.—-Demographic Characteristics of the Brick Field Workers (N = 216)
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 16:09 05 February 2015
Variable Gender Male Female Age group in years 21–30 31–40 41–50 >50 BMI range, kg/m2 18.5–24.9 25–29.9 ≥30 Literacy level Illiterate Primary school High school Degree Marital status Unmarried Married Widowed/Divorced Years of experience of work 1–5 years 6–10 years 11–15 years 16–20 years >20 years Income in a week 800 per week 1000 per week 1200 per week Duration of work 50 11 BMI range, kg/m2 18.5–24.9 41 25–29.9 82 ≥30 25 Literacy level Illiterate 62 Primary school 75 High school 11 Degree Nil Years of experience of work 1–5 years 20 6–10 years 66 11–15 years 47 16–20 years 15 >20 years 0 Duration of work 50 BMI range, kg/m2 18.5–24.9 25–29.9 ≥30 Literacy level Illiterate Primary school High school Degree
.025 37 58 42 11
59.7% 65.2% 77.8% 100%
25 31 12 00
40.3% 34.8% 22.2% 0.0%
41 82 25
66.1 68.9 100
21 37 00
33.9 31.1 0.00
62 75
66.7 69.4
31 33
33.3 30.6
11
73.3 0
04 26.7 0.0 00 0.0 (Continued on next page)
.004
.839
Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health
Table 2.—-Characteristics of Brick Field Workers Who Reported WRMSDs (n = 148) and Their Comparison With Those Who Did Not Report WRMSDs (n = 68) (Continued) WRMSDs present Variable
p Number Percentage Number Percentage value
Duration of work
