Stress, health, noise exposures, and injuries among electronic waste recycling workers in Ghana.

BACKGROUND

Electronic waste (e-waste) recycling workers in low and middle-income countries have the potential for occupational injuries due to the nature of their work at informal e-waste sites. However, limited research exists on stress, noise, occupational injuries, and health risks associated with this work environment. This study evaluated injury experience, noise exposures, and stress risk factors among e-waste workers at the large recycling site in the Agbogbloshie market, Accra, Ghana.

METHODS

Participants completed a survey addressing their work, health status, stress, exposures to several occupational hazards (including noise), use of personal protective equipment at work, and injury experience. A subset of participants also completed personal noise dosimetry measurements. Poisson regression was used to evaluate the association between the number of injuries experienced by participants and various factors evaluated in the survey.

RESULTS

Forty-six male e-waste workers completed the survey, and 26 completed a noise dosimetry measurement. Participants experienced an average of 9.9 ± 9.6 injuries per person in the previous 6 months (range: 1-40). The majority of injuries were lacerations (65.2%), and the most common injury location was the hand (45.7%). Use of personal protective equipment was rare. The mean time-weighted average noise level was 78.8 ± 5.9 dBA. Higher perceived stress, greater age, poorer health status, not using gloves, and involvement in dismantling activities were associated with an increased number of injuries. After controlling for each of these risk factors, perceived stress level and perceived noise exposure were associated with a significantly greater number of injuries.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study identified a large number of injuries among informal e-waste recyclers, and we found that higher levels of perceived stress and perceived noise were associated with an increased number of occupational injuries, even after controlling for other injury risk factors.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

All research procedures were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board (HUM00084062) and the University of Ghana Institutional Review Board at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR-IRB CPN 070/13-14). All participants provided written informed consent prior to participation.Not applicable.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.