Occupational risks among dock workers in the Port of Mucuripe, Fortaleza, Brazil

摘要

>The stevedores of the Port of Mucuripe are workers without employment bond with the Company Dock of Ceará. They act in the deck and the stowage of the ships, making the embarkment, the landing and the organization of containers. In this environment of constant exposition to risks, occupational physician is basic in the organization of plans of prevention of accidents, education of the workers and monitorization of the risks. The objective of this article is to characterize and to know the stevedore?s job, to correlate the port environment and its productive process with the factors of risk and the damages associates, as well as standing out the importance of the Occupational Medicine for the control of such risks. The fieldwork was developed in the months of January and February of 2003, with the application of 60 questionnaires to the stevedores. The analysis of the data evidence that the main inherent problems of health this stevedore?s job are, among others, the osteo-articulate (lumbar disc hernia and consumings in the joint of the knee) and metabolic disturbances (diabetes and arterial hipertension). These if not only must to the work, but also and, with great influence, to the context of life of these professionals.