Associations of job-related hazards and personal factors with occupational injuries at continuous miner worksites in underground coal mines: a matched case-control study in Indian coal mine workers

Abstract

A wide range of job-related hazards and personal factors may be associated with injury occurrences at continuous miner worksites but their role has been little documented. To address this issue, a case-control study in India was conducted to compare 135 workers with an injury during the previous 2-year period and 270 controls without injury during the previous 5-year period (two controls for each injured worker, matched on age and occupation). Data were collected through face-to-face interviews using standardized questionnaire and analysed using conditional logistic regression models. We found that the injury occurrences were multifactorial and associated with hand tool-related hazards (adjusted odds ratio/ORa=3.69, p<0.01), working condition-related hazards (ORa=3.11, p<0.01), continuous miner-related hazards (ORa=1.95, p<0.05), and shuttle car-related hazards (ORa=6.95, p<0.001), along with big family size, no-formal education, and presence of disease (adjusted odds ratios varying between 2 to 4). Stratified analyses showed that among the 36-60 year-old workers, hand tool-related hazards, working condition-related hazards, and shuttle car-related hazards had significant ORa (6.62, 4.38 and 15.65, respectively with p<0.01,) while among the younger workers, only shuttle car-related hazards had significant ORa (4.25, p<0.05). These findings may help to understand the risk patterns of injuries and to implement appropriate prevention strategies.

How Do COVID-19 Risk, Life-Safety Risk, Job Insecurity, and Work–Family Conflict Affect Miner Performance? Health-Anxiety and Job-Anxiety Perspectives

“…Widanarko et al [ 36 ] confirmed that occupational diseases with lower-back symptoms caused miners’ absenteeism to grow and reduce the productivity of individuals. Life-safety risks (i.e., occupational risks) in the workplace may impair several aspects, such as individual health or job performance [ 37 ]. According to the COR theory, when an individual’s resources are lost and fail to produce the expected return after a large amount of resource investment, the anxiety and job performance generated by work stress increase.…”

Establishing an index for monitoring occupational health and well‐being of coal mines: Consideration of individual characteristics

“…Briefly, frontline miners, with lower OHW in the Min and Dig, were given responsibility for production targets, representing a higher level of intensive workload. Working conditions are undesirable, including worse physical environmental conditions and higher risks (Senapati et al., 2020). Again, they have to accomplish the operational tedious procedures and tasks and fulfill their work responsibilities on a tight schedule.…”

“…The three categories consist of maintenance, electricians' teams, etc. They are also plagued by noise, high temperature, high humidity, insufficient working space, posture discomfort, and manual tool vibration (Senapati et al., 2020).…”