الفهرس 
Acknowledgement
Health hazards at the Laundry DepartmentOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 147 |  |  |
| | | from | 147 | | |
Abstract
The hospital laundry department is responsible for supplying all the departments in the hospital by clean linens. A laundry service within the hospital is very essential for the patient safety and hospital efficiency. As textiles sent to hospital laundries contain many types of pathogenic organisms, it is important that laundering not only has an appropriate cleaning effect but also has a satisfactory disinfecting effect.
The main cornerstone in the hospital laundry operation is its focus on infection control and cleanliness. If the laundering procedure has an insufficient antimicrobial effect, micro-organisms will spread to other patients and health care workers.
Laundry workers are exposing everyday to many hazards which affect their health and subsequently their work efficiency.
This study was conducted among laundry workers at Assiut University Hospitals to determine the main health hazards to which those workers are exposed. A total coverage of 53 laundry workers were included in this cross - sectional study which was carried out in the laundry department at Assiut University Hospitals.
The study instruments were:
1- A semi-structured questionnaire collected through personal interview which included the following data: Socio-demographic data, current and previous work, availability and usage of personal protective equipments, pre-placement and periodic medical examinations, affection of different body systems (respiratory, dermatology, hearing ,musculoskeletal affection), heat stress, work injury and the history of exposure to needle stick injuries.
2- Clinical examination:
• General examination.
• Chest examination.
• Dermatological examination.
• BMI.
3- Investigations:
• Ventilatory (pulmonary) function tests.
• pure tone audiometry.
• Serology for HBV and HCV.
4- Environmental walk through observation of the laundry.
The following results were observed:
• Socio-demographic characteristics:
The age of the 53 laundry workers ranged from 24 to 56 years old, 92.5% were males, 66% from urban regions, 26.4% were illiterate, 81% married and 17% had chronic diseases. By measuring their weight and height, 47% were classified as overweight and obese.
• Smoking:
Smoker workers represented 58.5% of the studied population with a mean duration of 15.8 ± 1.0 years, ex-smokers represented 9.5%, while those who never smoked represented 32%. Those who smoked cigarettes constituted 84% of smokers, the rest smoked shisha or combined cigarettes and shisha. 42.5% were heavy smokers on calculating their smoking index.
• Job characteristics:
Those who worked in the laundry for more than 20 years represented 22.6%, 64% worked 7 days weekly, 62.3% worked 8 hours daily. 55% worked in the morning shift, 26% worked in washing department and 70% worked in previous jobs.
• Personal protective devices, medical services and hazards:
Those who reported the presence of PPEs were 70%, 22.6% used them regularly, pre-placement medical examination was done to 20%, no periodic medical examination and no health education were carried out to the workers about the health hazards in the laundry. Those who were aware that they are exposed to hazards in their work in the laundry constituted 59%.
• Biological hazards:
Those who were exposed to previous NSSI were 19% because some needles were found between the folds of linen, 50% of them reported their injury, 21% didn’t know the methods of hepatitis transmition or had wrong knowledge. Only 24.5% of the workers received vaccination against HBV, while 38.5% of them only completed the 3 doses and the other laundry workers didn’t receive the vaccine because it wasn’t asked from them. By serology 10.6% of the workers were diagnosed as HCV positive and 6.4% as HBV positive.
• Chemical hazards:
Allergy: The use of detergents causes allergy and irritation to different body systems as chest, skin and eye. Nearly one fifth of the workers complained of allergy, in the form of chest, skin and nasal allergy.
Chest affection: Chest symptoms as cough, dyspnea and wheezes were found in 34% of the workers and the condition worsened by work in 78% of them. Pulmonary function tests showed obstructive abnormality in 7.8% of the workers and 4% with restrictive disorder and 2% with mixed obstructive and restrictive disorders. On examination, 9.8% workers were diagnosed as asthma and 6% as COPD. All the asthmatic workers aged below 40 years.
Skin affection: Skin problems were complaint in 15% of the laundry workers, mainly in the form of itching, the majority complained after joining the laundry work and 11.3% were diagnosed as having dermatitis.
• Physical hazards:
Noise: Auditory problems were found in 45%, 83% of them complained from hearing impairment, the problem began gradually in most of them, 62.5% of them complained from ringing, while 16% complained from ear pain and 16% from ear infection. The audiometric measurements done to the laundry workers revealed that 61.7% had hearing loss with a mean hearing threshold of 30 ± 8.8dB in their right ear while 55.3% had hearing loss with a mean hearing threshold of 31.8 ± 10.5 in their left ear. On measurement of the blood pressure, 15% were hypertensive which may be due to their exposure to high noise, which may be considered as a sign of extra-auditory effect of noise.
Heat: 88.7% complained from excess heat especially in the summer and 73.6% complained from excess humidity in the laundry. Heat stress occurred to 58.5% of the workers mainly in the form of heat exhaustion. The excess heat and humidity affected the work efficiency of 68% of them.
• Ergonomic hazards:
Muscle pain was a complaint in 49% of the laundry workers and 17% from tingling, more in the legs. It affected their work efficiency and most of them started complaining from this musculo-skeletal symptoms after started working in the laundry which significantly increased with the increase in their duration of work.
Finally we concluded that:
The laundry workers are at risk of many occupational health hazards during their work as biological, chemical, physical and ergonomic hazards. There were deficient personal protective equipments.
Our recommendations:
Medical care must be provided regularly to the laundry workers and elimination of the hazards to which they are exposed is recommended.