Determination the level of knowledge, attitude and practice towards hazardous chemicals and their health effects among offshore workers in oil and gas industries

Abstract

This research was conducted in order to measure level of knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) discerned by the people who are working in Oil and Gas (O&GO) field at offshore petroleum platform towards hazardous chemicals. There were few related researches had been published but most of them were focusing on occupational safety in the platform as a whole and none of the study is focusing on KAP towards hazardous chemicals and health complications.This study discovered the level of KAP on exposure of hazardous chemicals, the association of social demographic data (SDD) which were age, academic qualification, working position and experience with KAP, the association of knowledge with attitude, knowledge with practice and attitude with practice among the workers towards hazardous chemicals and the commonest health effects related to the workers. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 130 offshore workers in Petronas Carigali Sdn. Bhd., Kerteh, Terengganu using convenience sampling method. Well-structured questionnaires were distributed among the participants and all data were further analysed by using SPSS software and the association between the variables were tested using Chi-square test. Result: The KAP level of the workers in percentage was high (96.15%) for knowledge and excellent in attitude (93.85%) and practice 96.15%). There was an association between SDD (working position) with level of practice (p=0.032) among the offshore workers. In addition, there was also a significant association between level of attitude with their level of practice (p=0.002). The finding reveals there was no association between other SDD with level of KAP. There was no association found between level of knowledge either with level of attitude or level of practice among the offshore workers. Conclusion: Working position may have significant effect in determining individual level of practice in performing the roles. The level of attitude also may affect individual level of practice as being manifested based on the result. Respiratory irritation was the highest of most known hazardous chemicals to health among the offshore workers, followed by immune system disorder. In the future research, the level of KAP can be measured among onshore workers as well in order to compare the quality and attributes in performing their roles towards hazardous chemicals. This is to ensure people who are working in oil and gas sector will be equipped with excellent KAP level.