Health Impact Assessment and Quality of Life among Scavengers Exposed to Solid Waste in a Municipality Dump Site, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this descriptive research was to study demographic characteristics and assess health stitus and quality of life among scavengers in a municipality dump site in Nakhon Si Thammarat province. The data ware collected from all of scavengers in the study site by using questionnaire, observa-tion form, medical checkup including blood inverstigation and measure quantity of heavy metals in soil. Data analysis was conducted by using descriptive statistics and analysis of association factors with chi-square test. There were altogether 72 scavengers, 48.6% male and 51.4% female, with an average age of 38.6 years old. Most of them were Buddhist (93.1%), married (80.6%), and with primary education (72.2%). The average of income was 10,306 TBH; and the average family size was 4 persons. They worked 8 hours per day, 6 days a week. The main reasons for holding the current job were good income and no capital for alternative accupation. The most common symptoms of sickness was headache, common cold, skin rashes, muscle pain, injury and animal bite. Chronic illnesses (hypertension, diabetes, hepatitis, asthma) were reported in 11.2% of them. There were 36 persons with annual medical checkup. Blood examination revealed significant number of cases with high level of cholesterol and triglyceride, blood sugar, and abnormality of complete blood count and urine results. Exposure to heavy metals (Pb, Cr, Cd) was detetcted but at the level with no impact to health. Most of scavengers (65.3%) had moderate level of knowledge, 81.9% with moderate attitude and high level of self-protection behaviors. The assessment on quality of life revealed that 51.0% of them were satisfied with their health and 80.5% had moderate level of quality of life. There was no significant association between of demographic factors and health condition or quality of life (p>0.05). It was recommended that provision of knowledge, conducting surveillance, and promotion of health and quality of life should be continuously implemented for people working as scaven-gers.