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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter February 17, 2021

Occupational hazard in Malaysian traffic police: special focus on air pollutants

  • Putri Anis Syahira Mohamad Jamil , Karmegam Karuppiah EMAIL logo , Irniza Rasdi , Vivien How , Shamsul Bahri Mohd Tamrin , Kulanthayan K.C. Mani , Sivasankar Sambasivam , Hassan Sadeghi Naeini , Nur Athirah Diyana Mohammad Yusof and Nurul Maizura Hashim

Abstract

This paper provides a specific deliberation on occupational hazards confronted daily by Malaysian Traffic Police. Traffic police is a high-risk occupation that involves a wide range of tasks and, indirectly, faced with an equally wide variety of hazards at work namely, physical, biological, psychosocial, chemical, and ergonomic hazards. Thereupon, occupational injuries, diseases, and even death are common in the field. The objective of this paper is to collate and explain the major hazards of working as Malaysian traffic police especially in Point Duty Unit, their health effects, and control measures. There are many ways in which these hazards can be minimised by ensuring that sufficient safety measures are taken such as a wireless outdoor individual exposure indicator system for the traffic police. By having this system, air monitoring among traffic police may potentially be easier and accurate. Other methods of mitigating these unfortunate events are incorporated and addressed in this paper according to the duty and needs of traffic police.


Corresponding author: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Karmegam Karuppiah, PhD, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia, Phone: +60 389472513, E-mail:

Funding source: Ministry of Education Malaysia (MOE) Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2015/SKK06/UPM/02/2)

Award Identifier / Grant number: 5524770

Funding source: Putra Graduate Initiative of Universiti Putra Malaysia (IPS UPM)

Award Identifier / Grant number: 9640200

Funding source: Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)

  1. Research funding: This work is supported by the Ministry of Education Malaysia (MOE) Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2015/SKK06/UPM/02/2) under Grant Vote No: 5524770, Putra Graduate Initiative of Universiti Putra Malaysia (IPS UPM), under Grant Vote No: 9640200 and Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).

  2. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: Authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Informed consent: Informed consent was acquired from each subject in the study. The process of measurement and evaluation in this research was explained to the respondents. All the information and identities used in this study remain confidential.

  5. Ethical approval: Permission to carry out the study was sought from the management of the respective Traffic Police Stations and ethical clearance was obtained from the Ethical Committee of University Putra Malaysia (Ref: JKEUPM-2019-120).

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Received: 2020-08-22
Accepted: 2020-12-29
Published Online: 2021-02-17
Published in Print: 2021-06-25

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