Association between work vision and work ability among office and visual inspection workers

The aim of this study was to find out associations between perceived vision symptoms and work ability among visual inspection employees in industry and newspaper employees. A cross-sectional study was carried out in both work places based on two questionnaires, Human resource questionnaire and Work vision questionnaire. A total of 259 workers returned the questionnaire in industry, and the response rate was 90 %. A total of 44 workers returned the questionnaire at the newspaper office, and the response rate was 96 %. 40.9 % and 43.2 % of the industry and newspaper office respondents, respectively, were aged 45 or more. 82.3 % and 70.5 % of the respondents in the industry and at the newspaper office were women, respectively. The most remarkable vision symptoms, which have an association with physical work ability, were light sensitivity, glare, feeling that vision is poor, itching of eyes, watery eyes and smarting of eyes among visual inspection workers. The most remarkable vision symptom, which had an association with mental work ability was watery eyes. There were associations between gender and smarting of eyes, eye inflammation, light sensitivity and dry eyes. We also observed that women have considerably more smarting of eyes and they are also much more sensitive to light. Moreover, 11 % of women report that they suffer from dry eyes weekly or daily, but none of men reported such frequent dry eyes. There was also an association between age and difficulties to focus near among inspection workers. Majority of inspection workers (59.5 %) over 45 years old had difficulties to focus near, which is typical for aging people. Newspaper office employees’ mental work ability had an association with itching eyes, difficulties to move from a row to another and watery eyes. And on the other hand, employees’ reduced physical work ability had a significant association with light sensitivity and glare. However, there were no statistically significant associations between gender and vision symptoms among office workers. Nonetheless, there were statistical associations between age and smarting of eyes and eye inflammation. The results show that there is an association between perceived vision symptoms and perceived work ability: the better the work ability, the less perceived vision symptoms there have. Avainsanat: work vision, perceived work ability, vision symptoms, healt