Occupational health hazards faced by the farm women during grain cleaning activities

Cleaning of wheat grains and filling of cleaned grains in the gunny bags are the most common farm activities performed by farm women in every rural home. They perform these activities with old designed tools/methods which make them to work in faulty postures for long hours and is posing a serious threat to their health. The present study is undertaken to study the occupational health hazards faced by the farm women during grain cleaning activities The study was conducted on 30 farm women of Hoshiarpur Distt. Selected women performed the grain cleaning activities with the use of traditional tools and methods and the selected parameters of occupational health hazards like heart rate, energy expenditure, total cardiac cost of work, and physiological cost of work were studied. Heart rate monitor was used to record the values of heart rate at the interval of 5 minute each when the work of grain cleaning was in progress. From the values of heart rate, energy expenditure, total cardiac cost of work, and physiological cost of work were derived with the suitable regression equations. Results of the study showed that the peaks of heart rate and energy expenditure were very high and above the acceptable limits of the farm women leading to serious health hazards to them. It was therefore recommended that some suitable grain cleaning women friendly cost affective tools should be designed to reduce their stress and health hazards in the selected grain cleaning activities.