hotocopiers and printers release several toxic compounds when operating, posing a significant public-health issue since millions of workers worldwide might be affected.

Aim

To evaluate the effectiveness of educational program on knowledge and practices regarding occupational safety measures.

Subjects and Method

Quasi-experimental with one group pretest, posttest design was conducted, among 163 workers at central printing press, and all photocopy and printing offices at Assiut University Faculties. Data collected by face-to-face interviewing the photocopy and printing workers using a structured questionnaire. It included two tools. Tool I: Part One: personal and occupational data. Part two: Assessment of studied workers' knowledge about occupational hazards and subsequent health problems. Tool II: Hand washing & back stretching exercise observational checklist.

Results

The study exposed that 89.6% of studied workers had poor knowledge scores about occupational hazards and safety measures in the pre-test, which improved to 44.2% of workers who had good knowledge scores in the post-test and 58.3% of them had fair knowledge scores in the follow-up test. Additionally, 94.5% of studied workers had unsatisfactory practice scores in the pre-test, which improved to 62.6% having satisfactory practice scores in the post-test and 49.7% having satisfactory practices scores in the follow-up test with a statistically significant p < 0.001.

Conclusion

Implementation of educational program leading to an improvement of workers' knowledge and practices regarding occupational safety measures.

Recommendation

Continuing educational