Exposure to Particulate Matter and Respiratory Health among Electronic Waste Workers at Agbogbloshie, Accra, Ghana
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PDS 63: Chemicals and metals: health effects, Exhibition Hall (PDS), Ground floor, August 27, 2019, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM Background/Aim: Particulate matter (PM) exposure has been linked to informal electronic waste (e-waste) recycling activities, and PM inhalation has been associated with several respiratory health problems, including increased prevalence of respiratory symptoms and lung function changes. This study investigated the association between measured personal exposure levels of PM (1 and 2.5 µm) and the respiratory health of e-waste workers at the large Agbogbloshie, Ghana, site. Methods: 100 e-waste workers engaged in informal e-waste recycling at Agbogbloshie and 51 control subjects from Madina–Zongo were recruited and studies from March to April 2017. Each participant provided self-reported respiratory symptoms, diseases and work and home respiratory exposures. Lung function, including forced vital volume in one second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC) and ratio (FEV1/FVC), was measured using a portable spirometer (Easy One) and personal breathing zone PM exposures (I and 2.5µm) were measured using an optical instrument (MetOne Aerocet 831). Multiple regression analysis was performed to test the association between the PM and lung function measures. Results: Higher mean concentrations of PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 were recorded among the e-waste recyclers (41± 2 and 84 ±7) compared to the control group (14 ± 1 and 33 ± 2). Overall, burners recorded the highest mean concentrations of PM1, PM2.5 and PM10, (49 ± 6 and 112 ±18) compared to dismantlers (34 ±3 and 54 ±7). No significant association was found between the PM (I, and 2.5µm) concentrations and lung function (FEV1) measures (-0.25, P=0.806; 0.41, P=0,685). Conclusion: While e-waste workers had significantly higher exposure to PM in the breathing zone, associations with lung function measurements were not significant. This may be due to the short term (4-hours) measurements of PM among the workers. PM exposure patterns and e-waste tasks are being studied over time, to better understand the associated respiratory health effects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.011 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".