[Relationship between occupational exposure of waste manipulators of electrical and electronic equipment and respiratory problems in Bamako in 2019].

Introduction: waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), with its health and environmental issues, has become a public health problem exposing workers to toxic compounds causing respiratory problems.

Objective: To study the relationship between professional exposure to WEEE and the occurrence of respiratory problems in Bamako in 2019.

Material and methods: This was a 6-month cross-sectional, analytical study carried out in the city of Bamako in 2019 and involved 159 WEEE manipulators. Data were collected using a tablet (2). Univariate and multivariate analyzes were performed using SPSS version 22 with the significance level of 0.05. Odds Ratio (OR) were presented with their 95% confident interval (OR[95%CI]).

Results: The overall prevalence of respiratory disorders was 67.3% among WEEE handlers. It was noted that the removal of the coating of electronic wires (OR[95%CI]=25.93[2.30;291.53]), recent weight loss outside of a diet (OR[95% CI]=7,43[1.68;32.85]) and the infrequent hand washing with soap after the toilet (OR[95% CI]=11.50[2.07; 63.89]) represented a higher risk of (2) breathing problems.

Conclusion: These results show that D3E handlers have a lot of risky behavior for respiratory problems. This study could be used to implement strategies to reduce the impact of D3E.