Version 1
: Received: 8 June 2021 / Approved: 9 June 2021 / Online: 9 June 2021 (08:55:06 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 10 September 2021 / Approved: 13 September 2021 / Online: 13 September 2021 (08:43:37 CEST)
Aram SA, Saalidong BM, Appiah A, Utip IB (2021) Occupational health and safety in mining: Predictive probabilities of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) use among artisanal goldminers in Ghana. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0257772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257772
Aram SA, Saalidong BM, Appiah A, Utip IB (2021) Occupational health and safety in mining: Predictive probabilities of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) use among artisanal goldminers in Ghana. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0257772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257772
Aram SA, Saalidong BM, Appiah A, Utip IB (2021) Occupational health and safety in mining: Predictive probabilities of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) use among artisanal goldminers in Ghana. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0257772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257772
Aram SA, Saalidong BM, Appiah A, Utip IB (2021) Occupational health and safety in mining: Predictive probabilities of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) use among artisanal goldminers in Ghana. PLoS ONE 16(9): e0257772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257772
Abstract
The nature of Artisanal mining in Ghana exposes its workers to various levels of health, safety and environmental (HSE) threats. These miners are mostly liable for their own HSE state at work. In an attempt to understand the HSE dynamics of artisanal miners, this study sought to assess the effect of HSE conditions on self-protection at work by artisanal goldminers in Ghana. A nested binary logistic regression model was fitted to a cross sectional survey of 500 artisanal goldminers while controlling for compositional and contextual factors. Of the HSE conditions, only health (OR= 1.653, p<0.001) and safety conditions (OR= 1.935, p<0.001) were robust in predicting self-protection in all three models. Goldminers who reported good health and safety conditions were more likely to fully protect themselves at work as compared to their counterparts who reported poor health and safety conditions. For compositional factors, female goldminers were 84% less likely to protect themselves. Miners who had senior high (OR= 1.759, p<0.001) or tertiary education (OR= 1.875, p<0.001) were more likely to protect themselves at work as compared to those with no formal education. Likewise, miners who undertook routine medical checkups (OR= 2.533, p<0.001) and the most experienced miners (OR= 2.734, p<0.001) were more likely to protect themselves at work. Counterintuitively, miners who earned more monthly income ($174 and above) were less likely to protect themselves. At the contextual level, miners who worked in non-production departments (OR= 2.001, p<0.001) and miners who worked in the medium scale subsector (OR= 5.311, p<0.001) were more likely to protect themselves at work. To increase consciousness of self-protection in artisanal mining, there is the need for a national dialogue on how to improve HSE conditions and in the absence of legislation, the complexities in managing HSE in the sector needs to be decoupled to achieve fair and standard HSE conditions as championed by the World Health Organization.
Public Health and Healthcare, Public, Environmental and Occupational Health
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
