Hisanori Nagata

Effect of local sustained stress on general oxygen consumption in belt conveyer workers

The modern mechanization and rationalization of production procedures have recently reduced the intensity of work in most factories. However, it has been pointed out that monotonous inactive work and/or co-operative work can in some sense impose stronger mental and physical stresses which may induce ill health in workers. In this study, assuming the assembly and adjustment of videotape-recorders on a belt conveyor to be representative of monotonous inactive and co-operative work, changes in oxygen consumption, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, critical flicker fusion and subjective symptoms of fatigue throughout a workday have been followed for six female workers engaged in this type of work. The main results obtained were as follows: The average oxygen consumption of six workers was 230 ml/min, almost unchanged during the work. The belt conveyor work indicated the metabolic rate of 0.3 in terms of relative metabolic rate. The net daily energy expenditure due to the work was only about 100 kcal. The average heart rate during assembly and adjustment were respectively, about 1.4 and 1.2 times the average heart rate at rest. The blood pressure and the rate of oxygen removal increased slightly as the work progressed in assembly work, but did not increase at all in adjustment work. The critical flicker fusion and body temperature showed little change during the work.

Records of clinical histories of in-patients as a source of health statistics

The present study was undertaken to explore the possibility of using the records of clinical histories of in-patients as a source of health statistics.Analysing the records of clinical histories of 1, 977 pediatric in-patients who were discharged from three large hospitals in Kyoto, Japan in 1959 and 1960, the following results were obtained.1) In-patients are seemed to be a fairly unbiased representative of the population of serious cases. So, classification of illness, condition on discharge, duration of stay in hospital, age and sex observed on in-patients will provide the useful estimate about that on the population of serious cases.2) The feature of in-patients in each hospital is some what variable from hospital to hospital. So, in order to get the unbiased information on in-patients in some district, investigations on two or more hospitals in the district will be necessary.3) The clinical histories of pediatric in-patients seem to contain many items which are very useful as a source of health statistics. Especially, past history of measles and whooping cough, family history of tuberculosis and neoplasms, records on vaccination, and other records on state of birth, on infant feeding, on family size will certainly make valuable data for health statistics.