Musculoskeletal problems and fluoride exposure

Abstract

Frequent and repetitive activities in job and awkward postures are shown as major contributors of musculoskeletal problems in most of the occupational health studies; however, efforts to explore newer risk factor are important to plan interventional measures. In this backdrop, this study examined contribution of fluoride exposure to musculoskeletal complaints. A cross-sectional interviewer-administered questionnaire survey was conducted involving 180 randomly selected subjects from a metal smelting industry. Clinical examination of the subjects was also performed to assess their health status and morbidity details. Assessment of personal exposure to particulate and gaseous fluoride at workplace was conducted. Urinary fluoride level was also examined in post-shift samples collected from study subjects. The mean age of the study subjects was 39.1 (±6.7) years. Majority of the workers (42.5%) were engaged in pot room. About 54% workers were suffering from backache and 66% subjects had joint pain. Exposure of workers to both particulate and gaseous fluoride and post-working shift urinary fluoride level was significantly higher in pot-room workers in comparison with all other workers. It was observed that age (odds ratio (OR): 1.62; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.18-2.34), drinking untreated water (OR: 1.51; 95% CI: 1.03-2.76), working in pot room (OR: 1.44; 95% CI: 1.13-1.91) and urinary fluoride level (OR: 2.71; 95% CI: 1.81-3.75) had significant effects on musculoskeletal complaints. This study concludes that along with other predictors such as nature of work, posture at work and age of worker, exposure to fluoride also has significant role in the occurrence of musculoskeletal morbidity.

Physical Risk Factors Associated with the Upper Extremity Musculoskeletal Disorders among Aluminum Manufacturing Workers

“…UMSDs are significantly associated with repetitive motion tasks [28][29][30][31][32][33]. We found that tasks associated with awkward posture lead to complaints of UMSDs, as found in other studies [24,[30][31][32]34]. Lifting, pushing and pulling of heavy loads are associated with UMSDs pain; this finding is consistent with previous studies [24,32,[34][35][36].…”

Relationship of Healthy Building Determinants With Musculoskeletal Disorders of the Extremities: A Systematic Review

“…Twenty-six studies seemed to be eligible at preliminary review, but were deemed ineligible for the following reasons: association of MSD with HBD not assessed (n = 9) [86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94], HBD details not provided (n = 1) [95], HBD not assessed (n = 7) [96][97][98][99][100][101][102], independent impact of HBD could not be concluded (n = 1) [103], not indoor environment (n = 4) [104][105][106][107], not MSD (n = 3) [108][109][110], and not original research (n = 1) [111]. Sixteen studies [34,38,[47][48][49][50]58,63,67,69,70,72,73,75,78,79] uncovered in the current review were also reported in our other systematic review on HBDs and spine-related MSDs (back pain, neck pain) [13]. Of these 16 studies, 11 studies presented separate data for extremity/general MSDs and spine-related MSDs [47][48]…”

“…Overall, 178,532 individuals participated in the 53 included studies. Most studies (35/53) assessed workers in various occupational settings [33][34][35][36][37][38][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]54,55,[57][58][59][60][61][62][65][66][67][68][71][72][73][74][75][77][78][79][80]82]. Three studies assessed the general population in residential settings [52,63,64], one of these assessed residential dwelling type [52].…”

“…knee (n = 12) [48,50,52,53,[61][62][63][64]66,67,70,71], leg (n = 6) [36,47,52,61,63,70], ankle/foot/toes (n = 7) [47,48,50,66,67,70,71], and unspecified lower extremity region (n = 3) [37,46,85]. General unspecified MSDs were assessed in 14 studies [33,35,38,55,60,65,[68][69][70]73,78,[81][82][83].…”

“…The studies were conducted in numerous countries as follows: Australia (n = 2) [39,81], Australia and New Zealand (n = 1) [34], Bangladesh (n = 1) [33], Brazil (n = 3) [35,37,72], Canada (n = 1) [38], China (n = 3) [49,82,83], Colombia (n = 1) [67], Denmark (n = 3) [52,69,77], Ethiopia (n = 1) [58], Finland (n = 4) [56,59,70,75], India (n = 7) [55,61,62,65,71,73,74], Iran (n = 1) [64], Israel (n = 1) [54], Italy (n = 3) [45,57,80], Japan (n = 1) [50], Norway (n = 6) [36,43,44,47,79,85], Pakistan (n = 1) [48], South Korea (n = 1) [53], Sweden (n = 2) [76,84], Thailand (n = 4) [51,63,66,78], Turkey (n = 1) [68], and United States (n = 5)…”