Assessing the structure and importance of medical and social risk factors in pipeline companies’ employees

Aim. To assess the influence of medical and social risk factors in pipeline companies’ employees and to design measures to reduce unfavorable influence. Methods. The study included 369 employees of OJSC «Volgogaz» working on pipelines at 2007-2009. A special form for social and hygienic study was designed, including information about health and living conditions, eating habits, family relationship, obsessive habits and family history. Results. Employees aged 30-49 years and older (190 subjects, 51.4%), with technical secondary education (151 subjects, 40.8%) were the most common. The majority of employees assessed their job as hard, 48 (13.0%) and 261 (70.7%) patients reported significant and extreme fatigue after the working shift. 260 (70.5%) subjects lived in a separate apartments, mostly in rural areas (216 subjects, 58.5%), most have complete families with children (297 subjects, 80.5%), despite most having one-parent family at childhood. Over a half of all employees (192 subjects, 52%) had 3 meals per day, 310 (84%) subjects slept for 6-7 hours per day, 222 (60.2%) subjects are current smokers, 27 (7.3%) subjects drink alcohol more than 1 time per week. 149 (40.5%) assessed their living conditions, and 50 (40.7%) - their fare as satisfactory. The majority of all employees (175, 47.5%) were ailing less than 2 times per year, 228 (61.8%) assessed their health status as satisfactory. Thus, medical and social risk factors in pipeline companies’ employees were associated with significant physical efforts, bad working conditions, including rotational team method, and unhealthy behavior. Conclusion. Rehabilitative measures should include improving the social factors (work, living and leisure conditions), healthy behaviors, increasing motivation for perceiving information of healthy way of living and measures to improve health.

occupational diseases, medical and social risk factors, incidence