Journal of Health and Safety at Work

Introduction: Today’s, defective and faulty equipments lose a large part of them energy as noise and vibration which beside their financial costs can be hazardous to the health of people. Vibration as a physical agent can cause an adverse health effect on human to nervous system. These effects, based on body region can be as specific or general systems. Digestion system has a natural vibration of 3-8Hz frequency. When the digestive system is exposed by such vibration, it can make impairment on that system. This study aimed to study vibration effect on digestion irregularities.

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Material and Method: This was a retrospective case-control study conducted in a food industry. The number of 103 workers digestive problem and 431 healthy workers were selected as population study. Exposure to the vibration in the different parts were measured. People with more than 100 dB was considered exposed group. Then, after determining the number of exposed and non exposed groups, data were analyzed using statistical methodologies.

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Result: The acceleration level of vibration was 109.8 dB in the packing section, which was less than standard limit (118.8 dB). Study population had a managed of 24-57 years old with 4-15 years of job tenure. In 59.2% of case comparing to 22.7% of control group were exposed to the vibration. The odds ratio (OR) of prevalence rate of digestive problem among exposed group was 6.3 times more than non exposed group people, in risk of gastrointestinal complications.

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Conclusion: Beside of the other risk factors of digestive problem, vibration can be also an effective cause of adverse health problem: Even by lower level of digestive problem can be seen in the exposed people. So, we suggest in the workplace with vibration risk factor, a digestive health exam be take general medical beside periodic examination. Moreover, it is recommended that researches related to the vibration is widely developed and the vibration standard limits is revised, accordingly.