Complex approach to assessing risks and preventing various somatic diseases in workers (employed at furniture production)

At present a number of contemporary furniture production enterprises is growing fast in Saratov region. And simultaneously there is a growth in number of working places that require adequate sanitary-hygienic assessment of their safety. Our research goal was to perform complex assessment of somatic diseases risks for workers employed at furniture production. We examined 323 workers employed at «Maria» furniture factory. To perform assessment, we applied sanitary-hygienic, laboratory-instrumental, and statistic research techniques. It was established that 23 % workers had to work under hazardous working conditions (hazard category 3.2); 37 % workers had to work under conditions belonging to hazard category 3.1; 39 % examined workers had optimal and acceptable conditions at their workplaces (category 1–2). Having examined workers’ age groups, we revealed that workers aged 21–30 prevailed among the examined ones and average working experience amounted to 5.4 years for people of this age. The second in number were workers aged 31–40 with their working experience being equal to 8.5 years. At the next stage in our research we examined morbidity among workers employed at furniture production. Thus, it was established that diseases of the nervous system were the most frequent among the examined workers (33.3 %); they were followed by respiratory diseases (20.4 %), cardiovascular diseases (12.1 %), and digestive organs diseases (10.2 %). The third stage involved examining hereditary burdens on morbidity among workers employed at furniture production. Thus, 108 workers were established to have various diseases and 79.6 % of them had hereditary predisposition. At the final stage in our research we examined retrospect data on changes in workers’ life quality over 2015. The obtained data were compared with occurrence or absence of new diseases cases over the next three years.