Assessment of occupational health hazards faced by farm workers in green gram cultivation

Abstract

Green gram is the third main pulse crop of India grown in nearly 8 per cent of the total pulse cultivated area of the country. It’s a seed contains 24.7%, protein due to its supply of cheaper protein source; it is designated as “poor man’s meat”. The present study was conducted in Muzffarpur district of Bihar (India) to assess the occupational health hazards around 70 farm workers engaged in different activities of green gram cultivation. The study concluded that (100%) of male workers engaged in land preparation and storage activities and female workers (100%) participated in harvesting, winnowing and cleaning activities. The men perform operations like storage (100%), Sowing (82.8%), and harvesting (77%) were performed manually. Besides threshing (65%) using wooden rods, winnowing (37%) is performed using woven bamboo frames. Only land preparation (68%) was performed by using agricultural equipments like tractor. While women shows (100%) involvement in harvesting, threshing and cleaning activities manually. Most of the general problems (95%) in soiling of hair, face, and feet come from land preparation, harvesting, threshing and winnowing activities and most of the workers (95%) were faced a specific problems of shoulders ache and (100%) of workers facing a stress from poor working environment. Hence, there is need to further studies could be conducted on development of improved tool and technologies for mitigating occupational health hazards in green gram cultivation.