Identifying the most important occupational diseases in the construction industry: case study of building industry in Iran

Abstract

Among industries, the construction industry has the highest risk of work-related injuries and illnesses. Compared to other people in society, workers in construction industry are exposed to more work-related diseases. According to the literature review, this topic has been developed in specific geographic and the special statistical society; and the lack of complete research in the field of occupational diseases in Iran. The aim of this study is to assess occupational health status of workers in Iranian building sites by surveying among sample population. In order to achieve this goal, first some important diseases were discovered from literature review and according to the obtained results a questionnaire was developed and distributed among 245 people that are working at building sites with 14 different professions. Results showed that articular joint disease is approximately 44% higher than non-articular disease. In addition, the results showed that the frequency of disease among workers was more than people who worked professionally in this industry. According to the results, several recommendations were offered for example, providing training courses for physical activities. Future study needs to identify the factors that lead to articular joint and non-articular joint diseases in Iranian building industry.

Keywords:

• Building workers
• common diseases
• construction industry
• occupational diseases

Availability of data and materials

The authors do not wish to share their data. All the necessary data have been mentioned in the article. For additional data request, please contact corresponding author via email.

Authors’ contributions

HA carried out the scientific design and proposed the idea of research, participated in analyzing the findings and drafted the article. RT collected the data and participated for analyzing the findings. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Compliance with ethical standards

Research involving human participants and the authors declare the informed consent by all participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.