Mental health status of municipal solid waste incinerator workers compared with local government office workers

Recently in Japan dioxin problem of municipal solid waste incinerator (MSWI) became social issue. The news spread all around Japan and induced fear that workers at incinerators would suffer from cancer or other serious illness induced by the exposure to dioxins. Authors were interested in the effect of this stressful event occurred to the workers and intended to evaluate mental health status of MSWI workers compared with office workers. Subjects were male workers from two MSWI plants and a local government office; 20 government office workers who were engaging in health administration and 55 MSWI workers. Subjects were interviewed about their age, educational carrier, and working schedule. POMS and GHQ30 were used to evaluate mood status of subjects. There were differences in mood state between the two occupational groups. POMS showed that Tension-Anxiety, Depression-Dejection, and Fatigue levels were high in the health administration worker group. GHQ30 showed that General Illness, Social Dysfunction, and Anxiety and Dysphoria state were deviated to abnormal in the health administration worker group. General mental health status evaluated by GHQ30 score was also deviated to abnormal in the office worker group. Our results showed that mental health status of health administration workers was less healthy compared with MSWI workers. This meant that the stress of MSWI workers enhanced by the fear that they might have been exposed to dioxin did not exceed the stress the health administration workers usually had suffered from.