Mismatch Between Anthropometric Measurements and Dimensions of Toilet Chair: A Cause of Accidents

In India approximately 20 per cent of people aged 70 years or older, and 50 per cent of people aged 85 and above, report difficulties in basic activities of daily living such as bathing and toileting. The number of old people is increasing because of enhanced average life span and the old people with disabilities specially related to joints which creates hindrance or cause pain in using Indian toilets. The middle income group families in India are unable to construct European type toilets for their older parents due to reasons like space problem in their homes, financial problem and sometimes the family doesn't bother about elders to take so much pain for them. Thus to overcome from this problem the family members of the third age people had arranged the locally available toilet chairs for their older parents but no consideration was given for the dimensions of those toilet chairs and the body dimensions of third age people, which results in the accidents during and after its use. There fore, this study was planned to sort out the dimensions for ergonomically designed toilet chair to reduce the cases of accidents among third age people. For this purpose anthropometric data of 200 people of 60–70 years of age of Pantnagar and Rudrapur. were taken and the mismatch between ergonomically designed toilet chair as well as locally available toilet chair were measured Research design used for the study was experimental and purposive sampling was used for data collection. Results showed that there was a great difference between the locally available toilet chair and ergonomically designed toilet chair dimensions and the body dimensions of third age people which caused accidents.