Drought, the result of regional climatic variability is one of the dominant threats to environment. This study focuses on the biophysical, environmental and health issues concerning drought occurrence in northwest region of Bangladesh. Using both primary and secondary data, the analysis revealed that, during the drought period, rainfall as the dominant factor of supplying surface water and normalizing the dryness of the nature was almost 46% lower than the previous (normal) years. Similarly, average monthly sunshine hours in the drought year was about 7% higher compared to that of the normal year. On an average, groundwater level declined more than one meter compared to the previous years. Thus, many of the tubewells turned dry or failed to supply the required quantity of water for household and irrigation purposes. A significant number of surface water bodies including ponds, ditches, canals and streams had little volume of low quality water. In normal years, almost all households used hand tubewells (HTWs) as the major source of drinking water, while in the drought period only 90% households could use HTW water since substantial proportion of the HTWs turned dry. People had to collect drinking and domestic water from far distance to meet the basic requirements. Increase in temperature and prevalence of severe dust during drought periods compared to the normal years caused different health hazards including dysentery and diarrhoea due to unsafe drinking water.

Introduction: Occupational disorders invite absenteeism amongst the miners. Though rapid technological advancement has happened, yet assessment of cardiac workload was largely ignored in underground coal mines in India. Methods: Physiological stress was evaluated in terms of working heart rate, net cardiac cost and relative cardiac cost. Heart rate was measured during their course of work by heart rate monitor at the coal face. Recovery heart rates and environmental heat load were also assessed. Results: Heart rate was found to be 117 and 122 beats/min respectively in first and second spell. NCC (49.7 and 54.8 beats /min) and RCC (47% and 52%) exhibit significant variations between spells, whereas rate of recovery had been very poor amongst the workers who regularly exceeded recommended levels of cardiac strain indices. The nature of work depicted it as a heavy job although recovery trend categorizes it heavier than that. ET and WBGT were above the recommended limits as per the guidelines of WHO and ACGIH. Conclusions: High physiological demand of the job with towering heat stress was found to hinder the recovery process and may cause deleterious impacts on the workers. Ergonomic interventions were highly felt towards job organization and up gradation of environmental conditions.

Introduction: Occupational disorders invite absenteeism amongst the miners. Though rapid technological advancement has happened, yet assessment of cardiac workload was largely ignored in underground coal mines in India. Methods: Physiological stress was evaluated in terms of working heart rate, net cardiac cost and relative cardiac cost. Heart rate was measured during their course of work by heart rate monitor at the coal face. Recovery heart rates and environmental heat load were also assessed. Results: Heart rate was found to be 117 and 122 beats/min respectively in first and second spell. NCC (49.7 and 54.8 beats /min) and RCC (47% and 52%) exhibit significant variations between spells, whereas rate of recovery had been very poor amongst the workers who regularly exceeded recommended levels of cardiac strain indices. The nature of work depicted it as a heavy job although recovery trend categorizes it heavier than that. ET and WBGT were above the recommended limits as per the guidelines of WHO and ACGIH. Conclusions: High physiological demand of the job with towering heat stress was found to hinder the recovery process and may cause deleterious impacts on the workers. Ergonomic interventions were highly felt towards job organization and up gradation of environmental conditions. Keywords: Coalmines; dressers; workload DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/joim.v32i2.4938 Journal of Institute of Medicine, August, 2010; 32: 11-17