ANNOUNCEMENTS
According to a pulmonary function test of traffic policemen (TP), at least one in every seven traffic policemen suffers from respiratory disorders. TP spend anywhere between 12 and 14 hours a day managing traffic on the roads where air pollution levels average three to four times the safe standards. An increased risk of cancer has also been reported in occupations with heavy exposure to traffic-related pollution. The National Human Rights Commission stated that state governments don't provide any extra allowances or health facilities to the traffic police personnel.
Therefore, the research question that this study tried to address is how does occupational exposure to air pollution impacts the health of a group of policemen in Faridabad as compared to a group of policemen who are not exposed to occupational air pollution. In other words, the study tries to find the impact of occupational exposure to air pollution on traffic policemen in Faridabad. This was done using impact evaluation analysis where the treatment group or the group exposed to air pollution are 48 traffic policemen while the control group or group not exposed to air pollution during work are 132 other policemen excluding traffic policemen. Propensity Score Matching method was used to find the appropriate matching policemen from control group for the treatment group. TP suffer from 10.40 more disease on the disease scale as compared to non-TP. The mean disease score of all the policemen was calculated to be 3.8. So, the difference in disease score between TP and non-TP is almost three times the mean disease score across all policemen. It was also found out that usage of masks reduces the total disease score by 5.192 points and reducing the standing time of TP by one hour in a day decreased disease score by 0.223 units.
