Study of occupational exposure to brick kiln emissions on heavy metal burden, biochemical profile, cortisol level and reproductive health risks among female workers at Rawat, Pakistan

David, Mehwish; Ain, Qurat Ul; Afzal, Muhammad Sohail; Shoaib, Muhammad; Aman, Faiza; Cloete, Karen J.; Turi, Naheed; Jahan, Sarwat

doi:10.1007/s11356-020-10275-4

Cited by 31 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Blood sampling were completed from March 2018 to November 2018 at different brick kiln sites in Rawat (District Rawalpindi, Punjab). The area map has been provided in a previous report 20 . The approval to conduct this study was obtained by the Bio-Ethical Committee of the Department of Zoology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad and was assigned protocol # BEC-FBS-QAU2018-97.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A survey was conducted and different brick kiln sites from District Rawalpindi (Potohar) were selected 20 . District Rawalpindi contains 238 functional brick kilns of which 108 brick kilns are in the Gujar Khan region near Rawat, Islamabad, that was selected on the basis of production capacity, functionality, nearness to communities and operation throughout the year.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…certain brick kilns were not registered and therefore their owners did not agree to participate; prevalence of bonded and child labor; and illiteracy as well as the occurrence of superstitious beliefs. More detailed information on the study area can be found in our previous work 20 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Zinc acts as a functional and structural element for human health and plays an important role in cancer etiology and human growth 15 . Heavy metals are also reported to induce reproductive toxicity in both males and females 20 – 23 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Biochemical and reproductive biomarker analysis to study the consequences of heavy metal burden on health profile of male brick kiln workers

David

Jahan

Hussain

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present study aims to assess the effect of a heavy metal burden on general health, biochemical parameters, an antioxidant enzyme, and reproductive hormone parameters in adult male brick kiln workers from Pakistan. The study participants (n = 546) provided demographic data including general health as well as body mass index. Blood was collected to quantitatively assess hematological, biochemical, and reproductive hormone parameters as well as heavy metal concentrations using both atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE). The data showed that 10% of the brick kiln workers were underweight and 10% obese (P = 0.059), with workers also reporting multiple health issues. Heavy metal concentrations utilizing AAS revealed significantly (p = 0.000) higher levels of cadmium, chromium, and nickel, while PIXE detected more than permissible levels of Si, P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Zn, Ti (p = 0.052), Mn (p = 0.017), Fe (p = 0.055), Co (p = 0.011), Ni (p = 0.045), and Cu (p = 0.003), in the blood of kiln workers. Moreover, a significant increase in platelet count (P = 0.010), a decrease in sodium dismutase levels (p = 0.006), a major increase in reactive oxygen species (p = 0.001), and a reduction in protein content (p = 0.013) were evident. A significant increase in cortisol levels (p = 0.000) among the workers group was also observed. The concentration of LH and FSH increased significantly (p = 0.000), while that of testosterone decreased (p = 0.000) in the worker group compared with controls. A significant inverse relationship was found between cortisol, LH (r = − 0.380), and FSH (r = − 0.946), while a positive correlation between cortisol and testosterone was also evident (r = 0.164). The study concludes that increased heavy metal burden in the blood of brick kiln workers exposes them to the development of general and reproductive health problems due to compromised antioxidant enzyme levels, increased oxidative stress conditions, and a disturbing reproductive axis.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Biochemical and reproductive biomarker analysis to study the consequences of heavy metal burden on health profile of male brick kiln workers

David

Jahan

Hussain

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Further examples include Özkan et al [10], who performed an environmental and economic assessment throughout the life cycle of brick making, Kulkarni and Rao [11], who calculated CO 2 emissions from clamp kilns, a widely used type of brick kilns in India, and compared it with other prevalent kinds of brick kilns, and Chen et al [12], who calculated the emission factor of some main air pollutants for current brick kilns in China. In other efforts, Yuan et al [13] analyzed the environmental impacts, energy consumption, and economic aspects of brick production processes using a cradle-to-grave approach, David et al [14] assessed both detrimental effects on the environment and workers' health due to brick operations, and Sherris et al [15] investigated the health effects of dust and air pollutants on children, which are emitted by brick kilns. Finally, Nasir et al [16] assessed both detrimental environmental effects and human health problems due to brick production in Pakistan.…”

Section: Environmental Competencies In Brick Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable High-Tech Brick Production with Energy-Oriented Consumption: An Integrated Possibilistic Approach Based on Criteria Interdependencies

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Brick making contributes significantly to the of supply materials for the building industry. The majority of brick production sectors, especially in developing countries, employ polluting and energy-inefficient technologies. Due to the increasing pressures on manufacturing firms to improve economic performance and growing environmental protection issues, sustainable and clean production is the main concern for brick makers. This paper considers the technological, economic, environmental, social, and energy-oriented criteria to select the optimal brick production technologies. Therefore, technology selection is viewed as a multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problem. This research proposes a novel hybrid fuzzy MCGDM (HFMCGDM) model to tackle the problem. In this respect, first of all, the modified triangular fuzzy pair-wise comparison (MTFPC) method is proposed to compute the local weights of criteria and sub-criteria. Then, a fuzzy DEMATEL (FDEMATEL) method is presented to calculate the interdependencies between and within the criteria. Moreover, the integration of MTFPC and FDEMATEL methods is applied to calculate the global criteria weights. Afterward, a novel method is proposed to determine the experts’ weight. Considering the last aggregation approach to diminish data loss, a new version of a fuzzy TOPSIS method is proposed to find the local and global priorities of the candidates. Then, a case study is given to demonstrate the applicability and superiority of the proposed methodology. To get a deeper view about considering kilns, energy and environmental performance of which has been investigated. Moreover, a comparative analysis is presented to illuminate the merits of the proposed methodology. Eventually, a sensitivity analysis is conducted to peruse the influence of criteria weights on ranking order.

show abstract

Environmental Challenges, Disaster Risk, and Social Policy for Women of Pakistan

Jafree

2023

Social Policy for Women in Pakistan

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Study of occupational exposure to brick kiln emissions on heavy metal burden, biochemical profile, cortisol level and reproductive health risks among female workers at Rawat, Pakistan

Cited by 31 publications

References 58 publications

Biochemical and reproductive biomarker analysis to study the consequences of heavy metal burden on health profile of male brick kiln workers

Biochemical and reproductive biomarker analysis to study the consequences of heavy metal burden on health profile of male brick kiln workers

Sustainable High-Tech Brick Production with Energy-Oriented Consumption: An Integrated Possibilistic Approach Based on Criteria Interdependencies

Environmental Challenges, Disaster Risk, and Social Policy for Women of Pakistan

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About