Associations of job-related hazards and personal factors with occupational injuries at continuous miner worksites in underground coal mines: a matched case-control study in Indian coal mine workers

A wide range of job-related hazards and personal factors may be associated with injury occurrences at continuous miner worksites but their role has been little documented. To address this issue, a case-control study in India was conducted to compare 135 workers with an injury during the previous 2-yr period and 270 controls without injury during the previous 5-yr period (two controls for each injured worker, matched on age and occupation). Data were collected through face-to-face interviews using standardized questionnaire and analyzed using conditional logistic regression models. We found that the injury occurrences were multifactorial and associated with hand tool-related hazards (adjusted odds ratio/ORa=3.69, p<0.01), working condition-related hazards (ORa=3.11, p<0.01), continuous miner-related hazards (ORa=1.95, p<0.05), and shuttle car-related hazards (ORa=6.95, p<0.001), along with big family size, no-formal education, and presence of disease (adjusted odds ratios varying between 2 to 4). Stratified analyses showed that among the 36–60 yr-old workers, hand tool-related hazards, working condition-related hazards, and shuttle car-related hazards had significant ORa (6.62, 4.38 and 15.65, respectively with p<0.01,) while among the younger workers, only shuttle car-related hazards had significant ORa (4.25, p<0.05). These findings may help to understand the risk patterns of injuries and to implement appropriate prevention strategies.