Respiratory morbidity among street sweepers working at Hanumannagar Zone of Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Maharashtra.

Due to the occupational exposure street sweepers are very much vulnerable to develop the chronic diseases of respiratory system. Therefore this study was undertaken to find out the proportion of chronic respiratory morbidity among the street sweepers and the role of various associated risk factors. The study included two groups: study group i.e. street sweepers and comparison group (Class IV workers working in the office buildings). Various risk factors studied were age, sex, socioeconomic status, length of service, smoking habit, type of house, area of residence, cooking fuel and pets. Proportion of chronic respiratory morbidity (chronic bronchitis, asthma and bronchiectasis) was higher (8.1%) among street sweepers compared to comparison group (2.1%), the difference being statistically significant. Unconditional multivariate logistic regression revealed that risk of having chronic respiratory morbidity among street sweepers was 4.24 (95% CI of OR = 1.24 to 14.50) times higher than that in the comparison group and the risk increased significantly with increasing length of service (OR = 1.75, 95 % CI = 1.09 to 2.81).