Sociodemographic, labor, and health characteristics of workers from popular foodservices in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Objective This study described a population of foodservice workers, focusing on their sociodemographic, labor and health characteristics. Methods This sectional study included 426 (98%) workers of popular foodservices of the state of Rio de Janeiro who answered a questionnaire administered by trained interviewers. Associations were investigated with the Pearson's chi-square test or the Fisher's exact test for small samples. Results Most of the workers were males (62.7%). The mean age of the workers was 35.1 years (SD=10.3). Very few workers (11.3%) had had less than 4 years of formal education and 42.2% had had from 5 to 8 years of formal education. The following environmental stressors were mentioned with decreasing order of importance: temperature (90.1%), noise (51.2%), physical effort (36.2%) and luminosity (10.5%). The medical diagnoses included work-related musculoskeletal disorders (15.0%), hypertension (14.3%), gastritis (12.7%) and diabetes mellitus type II (2.1%). The most common work accidents in the 12 months prior to the interview were cuts (20.2%) and bruises (16.0%). Conclusion The data showed that although different jobs are affected by the work environment, wages and qualification, these factors had a greater impact on the general service assistants.