Abstract
This cross-sectional descriptive study was aimed at studying the situation of occupational health and environmental surveillance in the Northern Region Industrial Estate, Lamphun Province. There were seven small, eight medium-sized and four large factories, that were chosen by purposive sampling. A total of 503 workers were chosen as
subjects by simple random sampling of workers in the 19 factories plus 19 administrative
staff. The instruments used in this study were an interview form and questionnaire.
Content validity was reviewed by five experts. Data were analyzed by using descriptive
statistics (the SPSS software program for Windows) The duration of the study was from
January to September 1999.
The findings from this study showed that all sizes of factory posed similar health
and environmental risks. The data collection and analysis were not efficient. In addition,
the Action Plan of Occupational Diseases was not applicable, and the data coordination
system was not appropriate for the participating organizations, although all administrative staff were ready to develop a more effective workers’ health and environmental surveillance system.
The following are recommendations from this study: Factories should design occupational health and environmental surveillance in line with the occupational risks and in
accordance with the factories and the participating organizations. They should also implement continuous tracking and evaluation as well as develop an effective data-coordinating system.
