Occupational Health Hazards Among Solid Waste Scavengers in Owerri North Local Government Area in Imo State

This study determined the occupational health hazards among solid waste scavengers in Owerri North L.G.A in Imo State. Five specific objectives with corresponding research questions and five hypotheses guided the study. Cross-sectional descriptive study design was used for this study. A multi-staged sampling technique, simple random sampling technique and a purposive sampling technique were used to draw samples of 49 scavengers that responded. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection after being validated and its reliability tested. The data collected was analysed using frequencies, percentage, the hypotheses were tested using chi-square statistics at ≤0.05 level of significance. Results showed that (32.7) are within the age group of 38-47 years old. (89.8%), are male (36.7%) attain primary and secondary education (49.0%) are married, (49.0%) are less than 5 years into the scavenging business while (40.8%) earn less than N30,000 monthly from the scavenging business. On the exposure to physical health hazards, 55.1% have a high exposure while 44.9% have a low exposure to physical health hazards. On the exposure of chemical health hazards, 38.8% have a low exposure while 61.2% have a high exposure to chemical health hazards. On the exposure to biological health hazards 36.7% have a high exposure while 63.3% have a low exposure to biological hazard. On the exposure to ergonomic health hazards 71.4% have a high exposure while 28.6% have a low exposure to ergonomic health hazards. Overall preventive practices taken by respondents against hazards resulting from scavenging, 75.5% have poor preventive practices while 24.5% had good preventive practices. No significant association was established between exposure to physical health hazards during Scavenging activities and Respondents age, sex, educational attainment, marital status, years in business and monthly income (p-value = 0.296, 0.816, 0.794, 0.920, 0,373, 0.442 respectively). No significant association was established between exposure to chemical hazard during scavenging activities and respondents age, sex, educational attainment, marital status, years in business and monthly income (p-value = 0.317, 0.363, 0.743, 0.802, 0.113, 0.161 respectively). No significant association was established between exposure to biological hazard during scavenging activities and respondents age, sex, educational attainment, marital status, years in business and monthly income (p-value = 0.617, 0.873, 0.222, 0.918, 0.914, 0.977 respectively).No significant association was established between exposure to ergonomic health hazard during scavenging activities and respondents age, sex, educational attainment, marital status, years in business and monthly income (p-value = 0.216, 0.136, 1.764, 0.166, 0.679, 0.503 respectively). No significant association was established between preventive practices taken by respondents against health hazards resulting from Scavenging and respondents age, sex, educational attainment, marital status, years in business and monthly income (p-value = 0.438, 0.805, 0.202, 0.623, 0.190, 0.357 respectively). Solid wastes scavengers are more exposed to physical, chemical and ergonomic health hazards than biological due to lack of PPE required for scavenging and ignorance of the health hazards, So the state government and regulating bodies should provide and ensure the usage of PPE and operational guidelines for solid waste scavenging.