The risk of injuries during work and its association with precipitation: New insight from a sentinel-based surveillance and a case-crossover design

Front Public Health. 2023 Mar 2:11:1117948. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1117948. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Background: Injuries during work are often exogenous and can be easily influenced by environmental factors, especially weather conditions. Precipitation, a crucial weather factor, has been linked to unintentional injuries, yet evidence of its effect on work-related injuries is limited. Therefore, we aimed to clarify the impact of precipitation on injuries during work as well as its variation across numerous vulnerability features.

Methods: Records on the work-related injury during 2016-2020 were obtained from four sentinel hospitals in Guangzhou, China, and were matched with the daily weather data during the same period. We applied a time-stratified case-crossover design followed by a conditional logistic regression to evaluate the association between precipitation and work-related injuries. Covariates included wind speed, sunlight, temperature, SO 2, NO 2, and PM 2.5. Results were also stratified by multiple factors to identify the most vulnerable subgroups.

Results: Daily precipitation was a positive predictor of work-related injuries, with each 10 mm increase in precipitation being associated with an increase of 1.57% in the rate of injuries on the same day and 1.47-1.14% increase of injuries on subsequent 3 days. The results revealed that precipitation had a higher effect on work-related injuries in winter (4.92%; 95%CI: 1.77-8.17%). The elderly (2.07%; 95%CI: 0.64-3.51%), male (1.81%; 95%CI: 0.96-2.66%) workers or those with lower educational levels (2.58%; 95%CI: 1.59-3.54%) were more likely to suffer from injuries on rainy days. There was a higher risk for work-related injuries caused by falls (2.63%; 95%CI: 0.78-4.52%) or the use of glass products (1.75%; 95%CI: 0.49-3.02%) on rainy days.

Conclusions: Precipitation was a prominent risk factor for work-related injury, and its adverse effect might endure for 3 days. Certain sub-groups of workers were more vulnerable to injuries in the rain.

Keywords: case-crossover; precipitation; sentinel-surveillance; susceptibility; work-related injury.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Cross-Over Studies
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Occupational Injuries* / epidemiology
  • Occupational Injuries* / etiology
  • Seasons
  • Temperature
  • Weather

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant number 202YFC3600804), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 81973150, 82204154, and 82204162), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M693594), and the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (grant numbers: 2020A1515011294, 2020A1515110230, 2021A1515011765, and 2021A1515011591). The sponsor of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or writing of the manuscript.