José Martim Marques Simas
Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil
Biography
José Martim Marques Simas is a master scientist, doctorate student at the Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil, PPG Interdisciplinary in Health Sciences. Maria do Carmo Baracho de Alencar, Líria Yuri Yamauchi and Daniel Araki Ribeiro are PhD’s and professors at Federal University of Sao Paulo (UNIFESP), Institute of Health and Society.
Abstract
The aim of this study was to analyze aspects of health of banana cultivation workers in a region of the Ribeira Valley, Brazil. In a first step, a list of all families registered in the Family Healh Strategy Program of a Ribeira Valley were obtained. A questionnaire was applied to obtain sociodemographic, health and work data, as well as the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ), the Self Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20), and the Pulmonary Function Test with the Spirobank® portable device was performed. In a second stage, individual recorded semi-structured interviews of workers are going on for content analyses. Thirty-six workers from 10 properties participated in the study, being the majority male (94.4%), aged 20 to 49 years old (75.0%) and 58.3% with low school degree. Of these, suffered a work accident in the cutting and loading of banana bunches (55.5%), presence of musculoskeletal disorders (94.5%), suspicion of common mental disorders (25.0%), and reported respiratory symptoms (33.0%) including dyspnea (58.3%). Most of them had direct contact with the handling of pesticides (91.7%), and reported not using all the personal protective equipment (30.6%). The study is going on, and five interviews were carried out with the workers. Among the qualitative results: musculoskeletal symptoms characterized as "normal", handling of loads in some tasks, need for employment, health risks due to the handling of pesticides, inadequacies of safety equipment, among others. The results indicates health risks in tasks of banana cultivation, especially in the cutting, thinning, loading and spraying of pesticides in Ribeira Valley.