Assessment of toll booth plaza workers health: an epidemiological study in Delhi, India
Student name: Mr Ankit Gupta
Guide: Dr Suresh Jain
Year of completion: 2012
Host Organisation: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Ms Meena Sehgal
Abstract: Alarming effects of air pollution has impacted every section of the society. Occupational health
impacts due to bad air surrounding the work place are even more as compared to ambient
exposure. There has been a lot of research determining occupational health hazard due to the
vehicular emission especially on those who are in more vicinity to vehicular pollution like traffic
policemen, workshops, service stations, commercial markets. One of these is the toll collectors
who have been targeted in this study. The study is designed to find the exposure level of these toll
collectors while on duty inside the booths and the attempt is made to find the health impact due
to the vehicular emission exposure. The study is planned to monitor the air quality and noise
level inside the toll booth for a period of 24 hour. The air quality parameters monitored are CO,
NO2, SO2, VOC (Benzene), PM2.5 and Noise. The monitored data is analysed in different phases
of time as the 24 hour average, daytime (6a.m.-10p.m.) average, night-time(10 p.m.-6a.m.)
average and according to three shifts of the workers (shift1- 12a.m.-8a.m., shift2- 8a.m.-4p.m.
and shift3- 4p.m.-12a.m.). The data has been analysed for exceedence of the limits concentration
and also to find the dependence of parameters on predictors like vehicle numbers using Multiple
Regression method. Cancer risk due to VOC’s has also been taken into consideration in this
study. 6 toll stations around Delhi NCR have been covered with 1 control location monitoring.
Results show that the workers are not expected to face risk due to occupational exposure to CO,
SO2, and VOC which are within NAAQS limits except at station 3 where the levels of VOC are
too high that on evaluation, cancer risk rate comes out to be 6 per million population for shift 1
workers, 23 per million population for shift 2 workers and 51 per million population for shift 3
workers. NO2 concentration was recorded high. Noise levels exceeded the day and night limits.
Noise and NO2 shows a strong dependence on vehicle count if the model is applied at all the
stations but those for CO and VOC the relation is less significant. Survey and Spirometry testing
on workers display 16-17% workers are affected to mild respiratory problems.
Keywords- Air pollution, Toll Station, Cancer Risk, Respiratory problems, Vehicular emission
