Survey was conducted with various methods to grasp some problems on the worker's health and the labor involved in the farm work of welsh-onion cultivation. The surveyed area was located in Menuma, Saitama.
The result was that the labor requirement for the manual planting operation is too much. But there is a much greater problem on the health management. In addition, as a result of the CMI survey and the audiometry, the hearing problem of workers caused by the use of welsh-onion peeling machine was pointed out as another problem.
1. Health Management
On the health condition of workers in the survey area, abnormal blood pressure, excess grease in blood, corpulence and hearing problem are remarkable.
It is necessary to know and cope with several factors in human life environment, which affect on the variation of blood pressure. The examples are as follows: to avoid spiritual stress; to avoid exposure to coldness; to avoid taking a hot bath; not to eat and drink excessively; not to eat too much salty foods. It is thought that the reason of high blood pressure associated with dietary life in this area is the too much eating of salted salmon at lunch time. This is due to the most serious factor of not having enough time to prepare lunch. Nowadays, a song, ‘IEJI’ in Japanese title, locally called ‘Ichi Ichi San Maru (tone at 11:30am) Campaign’ is broadcasted at 11:30am in the area, and it is gradually becoming effective. Thus, it would be secure to have enough time for preparing lunch.
Against corpulence, it is important to diet and exercise, especially to decrease sugariness and grease in dietary life, however, workers in this surveyed area take soft drinks, sweet cakes and cracker at tea break during farm activity. This point should be reconsidered.
2. Protection against Hearing Problem
The protection against hearing problem is to decrease the noise at its source, which is the currently being used machine, the welsh-onion peeling machine. The noise, whose frequency is in high frequency region, is made when the onion is peeled off by compressed air from the machine. Some measurements to decrease this noise would be reported in another report.
It is also effective for protection against hearing problem of the workers to use protection devises such as an ear cork and an ear muff. As mentioned before, the frequency of this noise is so high that these two devises, the ear cork and the muff, could be recommended to be used because they cut off the high frequency sound.
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