Occupational and environmental health hazards in brick kilns

Abstract

Introduction: Industrial safety and a healthy environment reduce the illnesses, injuries, and accidental incidents of the workers as well as property damages. The study aimed to identify the health risk issues and assess their impacts on labors around the brick kiln areas in Bangladesh. Materials and methods: The study conducted a survey based on a structured questionnaire to collect health-related compliance from the brick kiln workers. It also selected 12 brick kiln clusters in Rajshahi and Gazipur districts, and several samplings were made. The analyzed data were compared with the prescribed national and international standards. Results: The survey results showed that the respondents were suffering from different diseases like respiratory and skin diseases, eye irritation, fatigue, hearing problem, headache, etc., due to the occupational hazard in the kiln areas. The study results illustrated that the particulate matter pollutants, including PM2.5, PM10, and SPM were found higher than the permissible standard that caused asthmatic disease. Most of the physicochemical parameters for surface water analysis exceeded the permissible standard indicating water pollution occurred around the kiln areas. The sound level was found higher than the acceptable level of Department of Environment, Bangladesh (DoE) standard 75 dB. Conclusion: The study observed that brick kiln emitted gases caused huge pollution in the areas threatened the human health and the crusher machine created the high intensity of noise resulted in significant adverse health impacts of the brick kiln labor. However, most of the labors were not well aware of occupational safety and hazards, and health-related compliances in the kiln areas.

Keywords

• Air; Brick kiln; Labor health; Noise