| Summary: | Cement Industries of Malaysia Berhad (CIMA Group) has been involved in the
manufacturing and distribution of cement and related activities. Regardless of the
cement manufacturing, dust is the major industrial pollutant towards the workplace
environment. Dust is emitted throughout all these processes especially during the
transferring processes and the crushing processes. This study was conducted to
determine the association between knowledge, practices and respiratory symptoms
among workers in cement industry. A cross sectional study was conducted, recruiting
56 cements workers at the final processing section at Negeri Sembilan Cement
Industry (NSCI). A walk through checklist and questionnaire were applied for data
collection and data was analysed using SPSS version 22. The workers that stationed
at final processing area were exposed to the dusty environment at high risk rating.
Majority of the workers never worked at dusty workplace other than NSCI (71.4%,
n=40). Most of the workers preferred to used dust mask at the workplace (80.4%,
n=45). Half of the workers coughed with sputum (50%, n=28). There was a
significant association between knowledge that respiratory protector can prevent
from respiratory problem with the frequency of wearing respiratory protector at the
workplace (p=0.001). The association between the knowledge regarding to wellfunctioned
of dust control system with respiratory symptoms such as coughing early
in the morning and cough with sputum showed significant association with (/?<0.05).
There was an association on respirator wearing with the respiratory symptoms among
the workers (p<0.05). As a conclusion, there is quite an average association between
knowledge on dust exposure, practices in wearing respiratory protector and
respiratory symptoms among the workers at NSCI. Implementation of sufficient
measures should be the first step to improve health and safety performance in the
cement industry.
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