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영어

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of farming in greenhouses with respect to subjective fatigue symptoms among farmers and the degree of symptoms. The study compared 176 green house farmers with 216 open field farmers using a subjective fatigue symptoms rating scale developed by the Industrial Research Institute of Fatigue, Japanese Association for industrial Hygiene.

1. With respect to complaint rates of the subjective fatigue symptoms, the results indicated that greenhouse farmers have, in order of severity, high degrees of low back pain, difficulty in collecting thoughts, and apt to forget.

2. With respect to cumulative scores of fatigue symptoms, the results indicated that both groups of farmers exhibited a lack of attentiveness and a high degree of dullness and sleepiness(category I). body projection of fatigue(category II ). and difficulty in concentration(category III).

3. With respect to general characteristics, it was found that the degrees of subjective fatigue symptoms were found to be higher among females, people with lower educational levels, and the elderly, regardless of ter group.

4. With respect to work related factors, farmers with more years of experiences were found to have higher degrees of subjective fatigue symptoms, except for open field farmers with less than nine years experience. Both groups of farmers were found to have high degrees of subjective fatigue symptoms when working less than eight hours a day and less than six months a year.

5. With respect to health habits. for people who get less than eight hours of sleep per day exhibited higher fatigue scores than people who get more than eight hours. People who do not smoke and drink also exhibited higher fatigue scores than people who smoke and drink.

6. The results of multiple regression showed that the risk factors related to the subjective fatigue symptoms of farmers in the greenhouse group were ages, levels of education, sex and for the comparison group, were sex. years of farming.

and hours of sleep. The R-square were 12.5% in the greenhouse group and 12.1% in the comparison son group.

The differences between the greenhouse and open field farmers in the degrees of fatigue symptoms were found not to be statistically significant even if the working conditions of the greenhouse farmers were poor. This may be attributed to non-work related factors, il social, economical, and psychological factors among greenhouse farmers.