Climate Change and Its Impact on Cardiovascular Indices among Male Paddy Cultivators While Engaged in Manual Reaping Task

Abstract

Agriculture including the cultivation of food crops like paddy is important in India both from the stand point of food security and providing livelihood to millions of countrymen. It is an open-air occupation and to a great extent not mechanized fully in many parts, it poses a challenge to the human resources involved in it; the gravity of the situation is on the rise with climate change becoming more of a reality than a possibility in the future. In this backdrop, a study has been conducted with the objectives to assess the degree of physiological strain of human resources in different types of tasks in paddy cultivation with respect to thermal environmental conditions prevailing in the open-air workplace at three different times of the day at different seasons and also assesses the impact of posture during carrying out of work as experienced by them. The results of the present study indicated that the individuals have different degrees of physiological strain.