Hygienic assessment of working conditions and occupational risk for workers health at railway transport objects

We performed hygienic assessment of working conditions at railway transport over 2011-2015. We detected a decreasing trend in specific weight of working places where physical factors were higher than hygienic standards and where steam and gases content in working area air was higher than maximum permissible concentrations (MPC). Working conditions of locomotive teams remain most unfavorable as per risk factors. We detected that a priori occupation risk for locomotive teams was characterized with parameters varying from moderate to considerable ones. Occupational noise was determined as a priority risk factor making working conditions category a hazardous one and it corresponded to occupational morbidity structure. We detected that sensorineural hearing loss took a leading place in morbidity both in the branch in general and among locomotive team workers. We also clarified that such workers as engine drivers and their assistants (up to 43 %) had the greatest specific weight among railway workers with occupational diseases; occupational morbidity among locomotive team workers amounted to 3.0 per 10,000 workers in 2015 while average morbidity among all railway workers amounted to only 1.32 per 10,000 workers. We revealed that occupational diseases were most frequently detected in workers aged 51-60 (51.9 % in 2014) who had worked under hazardous occupational factors influence for longer than 15 years. While there was an overall decreasing trend in occupational morbidity in the branch in 2011-2015 from 1.68 to 1.32 per 10,000 workers, we detected a brunch peculiarity in the risk group, namely, an unsatisfactory trend for growing share of workers with occupational diseases aged 31-40 (from 2.6 % in 2011 to 12 % in 2014) and it requires special attention in terms of risk management.