A study of the prevalence of respiratory morbidity and ventilatory obstruction in beauty parlour workers

A study was conducted in beauty parlor workers of Lucknow, India, to assess the prevalence of respiratory morbidity and lung function abnormalities compared to their control subjects belonging to the same socioeconomic status and ethnic group, having never been exposed to the workplace of beauty parlor and having not used any cosmetics. Respiratory morbidity and bronchial obstruction based on PEFR study was conducted in 196 beauty parlor workers and 35 control subjects. All the participants were non-smokers and were matched for age, height, weight and socioeconomic status. Peak expiratory flow rate were performed using Peak Flow meter. Symptomatic workers showed bronchial obstruction (28%), and this prevalence was significantly higher ( P < 0.01) when compared to 6.7% among asymptomatic workers. Bronchial obstruction among female workers (17.9%) was more prevalent ( P < 0.01) than male workers (1.42). Overall respiratory morbidity among beauty parlor workers showed higher (12.7%) when compared with control group (2.8%) but differences couldn′t attain any significance. Although nonsignificant, workers in beauty parlor showed more prevalence (9.4%) of bronchial obstruction based on PEFR than controls (4%). This study showed that beauty parlor workers were more prone to respiratory morbidity and lung function abnormalities, as the study group selected were non-smokers.