Methodical approaches to personified assessment of health risks caused by work intensity and its specific components

Abstract

High work intensity (HWI) can occur in various occupational groups and induce health disorders, which means occu-pational health risk (OHR) assessment is necessary. This article describes methodical approaches to assessing OHR caused by HWI with a possibility to examine contributions made by its specific components and transition to personified risk assessment. The suggested approaches to assessing OHR caused by HWI include subjective assessment of the factor and health self-assessment. They allow identifying additional likelihood of health disorders and performing further risk assessment when exposure to HWI grows by one unit as per separate HWI indicators describing its specific components. Personified risk assessment involves using a template created for specific HWI components (intellectual, sensory, or emotional loads; work monotony; work regime). The approaches were tested on workers with mostly mental work (n = 137, respondents’ mean age was 43.9 ± 8.01 years; mean work records were 14.5 ± 3.7 years). Calculated data of personified levels of the integral health risk were used to rank likely health outcomes as per their priority. Mental disorders and diseases involving elevated blood pressure were established to correspond to ‘high’ health risk. Myopia, strained headache, atherosclerosis of peripheral vessels, and chronic laryngitis corresponded to ‘medium’ risk. Certain disorders involving the immune mechanism, tinnitus, ischemic heart disease, and atherosclerosis of coronary vessels as well as stomach and duodenum ulcer corresponded to ‘moderate’ risk. Detailed HWI assessment made it possible to identify its leading components; the shares of sensory and emotional loads in the integral health risk reached 29.0 ± 2.4 and 25.9 ± 3.9 % accordingly (р = 0.37). It is advisable to use these findings for creating personified activities aimed at OHR mitigation.

Keywords

• risk assessment
• health risk
• occupational risk
• work-related factors
• work intensity
• health disorder
• personified assessment
• methodical approaches