EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENT ON HEALTH STATUS OF WORKERS. A CASE OF NOON SUGAR MILL BHALWAL

Industrialization is considered to be one of the most important tires of economic development in Pakistan. However, rapid unplanned industrialization without social and environment impact assessment is creating serious problems for human environment. Worse and directly affected in this process are the industrial workers, who are directly exposed to physical and social environment of the industry. This study “Effects of Industrial Environment on Health Status of Workers” was designed to examine the effects of industrial environment on health status of workers. Major objective of research project was to explore the impact of social and physical environment of the industry on the health status of the workers. This study was conducted at Noon Sugar Mill Bhalwal. Two hundred and fifty respondents were selected from various departments by using multistage simple random sampling. A well-structured questionnaire was used as a tool for data collection. The chi- square test was applied to test the relationship between variables of hypothesis. Results of this study clearly indicated that health status of the workers was affected by the industrial social and physical environment. Workers were found suffering from psychological problems like anxiety and depression and also reported problems due to night shift work, little salary and noisy environment. Majority of workers reports having a difficult relation with the boss. They also hold the opinion that the supervisor does not take care for the workers. The research recommends that facilities related to health, education etc. should be provided to all workers and physical work load should be decreased.