Assessment of Occupational Hazard Awareness and Safety Measures among Quarry Workers in Bomet County, Kenya

Abstract

Quarrying is a major economic activity in Kenya that supports the local construction industry, creates employment opportunities and is a major contributor to the national economy .However,despite these positive contributions, the industry is typically associated with hazardous working conditions, which affect the health and safety of workers.The International Labour Organization (ILO), estimates that quarrying accounts for 8% of the global work related fatalities.The study adopted Analytical cross sectional design and from a population of 542 a sample of 230 quarry workers were randomly selected from four quarry sites.A structured questionnaire was selfadministered to collect data on awareness of occupational hazards and safety measures from the respondents as a result of their daily work activities. An observation checklist was also used to record how quarry activities were being performed by workers. The interview was conducted with quarry managers and the institutions involved in Occupational safety and Health. The study further assessed the ambient air quality measurements with respect to inhalable particles (PM10), respirable particles (PM2.5), Carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2). The measurements was done using 3M EVM-7 Series Multi parameter Environmental Monitor, at a height of 1.5metres from the ground in order to properly determine the exposure level to which the workers are exposed to and 25 metres away from the pollutants at a rate of 1.67 Liter per minute for 30 minutes. Data collected from the questionnaires was cleaned, coded, tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis. SPSS Version 21.0 was used to analyze the quantitative data. It was established that 81.7% of the workers were aware of occupational hazards in the quarry where the main source of information about hazards was colleagues (55.5%). The most known health hazard among respondents was manual handling of heavy loads (63.5%) while the effect of hazard encountered by 73% of respondents was back/shoulder/waist/arm pain. Only 27.8% of the workers were aware of safety measures in place. It was also established that lack of management commitment (97%) was the top contributing factors affecting implementation of OSH measures in quarries. The study found that the PM10 and PM2.5 concentration ranged between 10.75 to 20.10 mg/m3 and 5.12 to 7.7mg/m3 respectively. The average concentrations for CO and CO2 ranged between 0.41 to 1.8 ppm and 802 to 2060 ppm respectively.The study concludes that the level of awareness of occupational hazards was high among the respondents. However, the respondents were insufficiently equipped with knowledge on safety measures to comprehensively mitigate occupational hazards. It also concludes that the dust concentrations failed to meet the recommended occupational exposure limit of 10mg/m3 and 5mg/m3 respectively as stipulated under Factories and other places of work (Hazardous substances) Rules of 2007 standards and therefore exposed the workers to the risk of respiratory, skin and eye health problems. The study recommends that quarry management should carry out safety inductions to all workers before they commence their contracts so as to promote a safety culture, provide the necessary PPE for workers and adopt other methods of dust suppression such as use of bag filters and scrubbers. It also recommends that the enforcement bodies (NEMA and DOSHS) should impose higher restrictions and enforcement guidelines for establishing quarries with proper provision for OSH services before granting licenses to quarry operators/owners.