Evaluation of Occupational Hazards among Workers in Selected Abattoirs in Port Harcourt

Aim: The study aimed at investigating the occupational hazards among abattoir workers in selected abattoirs in Port Harcourt.

Study Design: A cross-sectional survey was carried out in order to determine and evaluate the prevalent occupational hazards that abattoir workers were exposed to using a well-structured questionnaire. Three abattoirs were randomly selected for the study which involved abattoir workers, randomly picked from three different abattoirs in Port Harcourt. The study was conducted using a well-structured questionnaire and 140 respondents participated in the study.

Methodology: Five categories of occupational hazards namely physical, biological, ergonomic, psychosocial and chemical hazards were investigated. Z-test analysis was carried out to determine if there existed any significant impact posed by these hazards and the results of the analysis showed that the hazards were significant among abattoir workers. In addition, the data obtained was also analyzed using the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) in order to rank the prevalence of these hazards posed to abattoir workers.

Results: Biological hazard was ranked as a Class 1 hazard with a 71.53% percentage occurrence. This was closely followed by ergonomic and physical hazards ranked as Class 2 hazards with percentage occurrences of 64.29% and 54.28% respectively. Psychosocial hazard was ranked as Class 3 hazards having a percentage occurrence of 60.95% while chemical hazard was ranked as Class 4 hazards with a percentage occurrence of 35.24%.

Conclusion: This study thus confirmed the presence of the aforementioned hazards as critical in influencing abattoir workers. It was therefore recommended that abattoir workers be trained to increase their level of awareness and knowledge of these occupational hazards in order to protect their health and safety at work.