Monday, September 16, 2013
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.
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