| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 環境衛生研究所 === 90 === Private sector in housekeeping service has emerged as a new industry recently in Taiwan owing to the increasing quality demand of sanitary status in many companies. There are about fifty thousand employees in Taipei city in 2002. However, the total employees serve for the related industry are estimated to three to five hundred thousands nationwide. Housekeeping service industry needs high density of the labor force and heavy physical workload. The employees use detergents or chemicals in their daily working activities and some of them suffer adversity. Furthermore, the age of employees is generally higher. The problems of health and safety caused by physical workload and fatigue should be paid attention on. The purposes of this study are to investigate the work of fatigue and physiological effect and elucidate the potential hazards in the working environment.
142 housekeepers, working for a public hospital in Taipei city, were recruited in this study. The subjects include 77 in-house workers and 65 field personnel. They were performed physiological measurements and questionnaire investigation before and after work. Physiological measurements include response time, leg circumference, heart rate, blood pressure, grasp force and back muscle strength. Questionnaire investigation includes basic data, work condition, disease history, work-related injury, eye and nose symptom, carpal tunnel syndrome, habitual musculoskeletal pain, and subjective symptoms of fatigue.
The average age of the studied subjects was fifty-three years old. In work-related injury, there were 31% and 20% of field personnel, respectively, experienced cut injury and dermatitis for the past year. Besides, four workers, include two in-house workers and two field personnel, experienced needle stabbing. In habitual musculoskeletal pain, there were 42% and 37% housekeepers had low back pain (LBP) and leg pain. However, there were 26% and 13% housekeepers feeling irritation and dizzy in eyes and nose. In-house workers were classified as general type fatigue, however, field personnel belonged to physical-work type fatigue. In-house female workers increased right grasp force (P=0.01) and male workers had no difference after work. Field female personnel decreased diastolic pressure (P＜0.01), increased right grasp force (P=0.01), and better reaction of the response time measurement after work (P=0.04). But field male personnel decreased back muscle strength after work (P=0.05).
Lower incidence of workers’ fatigue was found in the study. The occurrences of work-related injury were high, because hospital housekeepers often touched chemicals and medical wastes. Periodic education of safety and health knowledge to the workers would be helpful to reduce occurrence of work-related injury.
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