Sunday, March 17, 2013

Conditions on the primordial earth


Conditions on the primordial earth
About  3600 million years ago were strikingly different from those found today. The earth’s atmosphere at that time was reducing and not oxidizing as it is today. You would recall from that large quantities of hydrogen, nitrogen, water vapor, carbondioxide, lipids and amino acids were present. The Oparian- Haldane theory suggests that complex organic molecules would have been formed through a series of chemical reactions in the earths primordial soup or we might say Darwin’s warm little pond. The theory also reasoned that make available in the form of heat cosmic rays and lighting to drive these chemical reactions.
 SEE ALSO
Miller and Urey’s Experiment and Molecules of life

Occupational Hazards



Occupational Hazards

For years, the phrase “occupational hazards” conjured up vision of people working in damp, unhealthy mines and in factories where workers and machines were constantly at war. Recently the concept been has broadened to embrace less visible but not less dangerous threats like cancer striking even 20 years after exposure to chemicals, dust and fibres in the workplace, noise and even psychological wear and tear.

The major categories of environ­mental stress for the workers are: chemical agents, physical agents, biological agents and conditions, and psychosocial factors. These may act either singly or in combination. Occupational accidents result from the joint action of both environmental and human factors and are therefore dealt with separately. The interaction between man and his working environment may lead to betterment of health, when work is fully adapted to human needs and factors, or to ill health, if work stresses are beyond human tolerance. Occupational diseases and injuries result from specific exposures at work. In addition, work exposures may aggra­vate certain illnesses or be a factor of varying importance in causing diseases of multiple etiologies.

Table : Occupational Disease and Period of Exposure
Occupational Disease

Period for which the Employees should have been in Continues Exposure.
Silicosis
Asbestosis
Bagasosis
Byssinosis
Pneumoconiosis
Farmer’s lung pulmonary disease due to inhalation of the dust of mouldy hay or of other mouldy vegetable produce & characterized by signs & symptoms attributable to a reaction in peripheral part of the bronchi pulmonary symptom-giving rise to a defect in gas exchange. 
   6 months
3 years
3 years
7 years
7 years
   6 months
  Ref. ESI Medical Manual, 2002.
According to the United Nations, 180,000 workers die every year throughout the world as a result of accidents and occupational diseases. Another 110 million suffer with non-fatal injuries. The concept of occupation health is new to India and efforts to improve working conditions are paltry. Accurate statistics on worker accidents and occupational health status do not exist (ESI Medical Manual, 2002).

Anthropology of Health and Occupational Hazard



Anthropology of Health and Occupational Hazard

Occupational health aims at the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well being of worker in all occupations and not mere absence of disease or infirmity (WHO, 1948).

In India the traditional public health concerns likes communicable diseases, malnutrition, poor environmental sanitation and reproductive health care get emphasis and priorities in the health policy. Recent industrialization and globalization are changing the occupational morbidity drastically, new pathologies like cancers, stress, AIDS, geriatrics, psychological disorders and heart diseases are on rise. This transition poses new challenges to health care system with new concepts of environmental legislation, ethical issues, new safety regulations, insurance and high costs of healthcare.

Traditionally labor-oriented markets are changing towards more automation and mechanization, at the same time general awareness about occupational safety, occupational and environmental hazard is limited in the society. With these structural changes the workers in low resources settings are more likely to be affected by the dangers of high technology than their counterparts in developed countries. Due to lack of education, lack of awareness about the hazards of their occupations, general backwardness in sanitation, poor nutrition and proneness to epidemics aggravate their health hazards from work environment.

In our country local medievalism and multinational modernism exist side by side, so the research on incidence, prevalence and prevention will have to address the needs in terms of future occupational health policy in India. The research approaches need to balance between understanding the modern industrial exposures and health risks of traditional sectors like Textile and small scale industries. So far not much attention has been drawn about the plight of Textile Workers and those working in several unorganized sectors. Being exposed to extreme dusty environmental conditions, chemical and poisons and mechanical hazards much attention is needed to reduce the accidents and diseases in these groups. Despite proper evidence from epidemiological data or information systems, meager information is available from small-scale and community based studies, which may be used for exploratory understanding of the occupation health situation in India.

Occupational health programmes basically aim to protect the health of employees. Unfortunately, in India these programmes are not given due importance. The National Commission on Labour had lamented: The loss of life through the slow and agonising process of an occu­pational disease may not stir the community as much as it would in other countries, although to the near ones it is a tragic occur­rence. Relief gets organized soon after the events but the preven­tion, which is the most important component itself, gets side-tracked.

Kinanthropometry





Kinanthropometry  is  an  emerging  scientific  specialization  concerned  with  the  application  of measurement to appraise human size, shape, proportion, composition, maturation and gross function.

It is a basic discipline for problem-solving in matters related to growth, exercise, performance and nutrition.

The area has been defined as the quantitative interface between anatomy and physiology.  It puts
the individual athlete into objective focus and provides a clear appraisal of his or her structural status at any given time, or, more importantly, provides for quantification of differential growth and training influences.

Without an understanding of the growth of children and youth and their structural evolution, selection
of talent and monitoring of training is largely a matter of sophistry and illusion.  Kinanthropometry provides the essential structural basis for the consideration of athletic performance.