Some Nutritional and Health Indicators of Egyptian Workers in Textile Factories

Background: Worker s Textile industries represent a large segment of Egyptian labor force. They are subjected to hazardous pollution via the dyes operation which contains heavy metals such as lead, chromium, cadmium and copper. Objectives: (1) To provide base line information concerning health and nutrition status of workers in textile industries. (2) To give recommendation to improve workers health status. Methodology: Sample included 1838 workers select randomly from seven factories distributed in five governorates (in urban area) in Egypt. Workers were subjected to a questionnaires designed to collected data about socioeconomic state, the daily diets intake recorded by 24hrs recall method. All workers were subjected to anthropometric measurements (weight and height) were then used to calculate BMI using the calcification propose by (WHO), and Hemoglobin concentration was determined. Results: Showed that, 69.5% of workers worked on direct production line and 30.5% on indirect one. About 27% of the sample was illiterate and 62% their salaries 500L.E/month. Comparing dietary intakes for both workers on direct and indirect production line, showed significant difference in both energy and carbohydrates and highly significant in total Cholesterol. The mean intakes considered sufficient for all macronutrients although there was about 41% and 10% of the sample had insufficient energy and protein intakes respectively. The mean worker intakes of Ca, k, Zn, and vit.C were about 50% from the DRIs. While mean intakes of total Fe, Na and Ph were acceptable. The worst intake was for dietary copper. Clinical investigation showed that, 18.4% of the sample had high systolic blood pressure with significant difference; respiratory symptoms recorded the highest percentage (49.6%) of studied unhealthy manifestations and there was highly significant difference between the two groups ( 5 5yrs). Significant difference were identified mean HB conc. of the two groups job duration ( 5 5 yrs), and prevalence of anemia was 24.2% 10.6% of the sample respectively. Conclusions: The study proved that the three factors affected worker health status were nutritional status via adequate diets and job duration, while work place either direct or indirect had no effect.