Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria

This study investigated occupational risks associated with roadside vulcanizers in Ife Central Local Government Area, Southwestern Nigeria. The objectives of the study included the determination of spatial distribution pattern of vulcanizers, examination of location factors as well as the assessment of risks that vulcanizers were exposed to. High resolution imagery (IKONOS) was downloaded and roads of interest were extracted from the imagery to produce a map of the distribution of vulcanizers. Nearest Neighbour Analysis was carried out to determine the spatial pattern of distribution of vulcanizers in the study are. Factor analysis was carried out to extract most manageable factors of location choice, other descriptive statistics were conducted to determine risks factors that vulcanizers were exposed to in the study area. Results revealed that vulcanizers were distributed in a dispersed pattern in the study area given the Nearest Neighbour Index (NNI) of 3.489. Also, proximity to traffic, distance from home, nearness to motor park, low competition, high traffic volume and opportunity for shelter were extracted factors which contributed a total of 61.314% of variance explained by the variables. However, traffic noise, exposure to weather condition and dust and smoke formed the major risks that vulcanizers were exposed to in the study area. The study concluded that most roadside vulcanizers were exposed to risks and actions be taken to relocate them from roadside to reduce mortality that may arise from unsafe trade location.


INTRODUCTION
Researchers across the globe have established the significance of workplace accidents as issues that require great attention from various stakeholders including but not limited to health practitioners, labour organizations both at regional and global scale, employers and workers themselves.This is because, about 2.7 million work-related accidents are being reported annually across the world International Labour Organization (ILO) (2011,2014).These accidents which account for an approximate 9% of the global burden of mortality have far reaching socioeconomic and health implications on millions of families and on global gross domestic product (Mahmood & Gill, 2014;ILO, 2014).Africa, in particular, has been described as beleaguered with unsafe working conditions in industries such as mining, construction, manufacturing and even service and also in the management of children labour, employment, informal economy (Alli, 2008).
Studies have shown that most workplace accidents are caused by unsafe activities and working conditions (Muchemedzi & Charmba, 2006).Also, various studies describing the distribution of injuries, in terms of person, place and workplace characteristics have been carried out (Armell et al. 2002;Biddle & Marsh 2002;Salminn, 2005;Parker et al., 2014).Researches have mostly focused on general industries that cover from manufacturing to construction to public organizations with fewer studies on workplace safety in informal sector, which has been reported Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.
as playing an important role in world economic system especially in terms of global employment (Saleem & Nisa, 2014).For instance, ILO's report shows that Africa has about 85.8 per cent of employment in the informal sector.The proportion is 68.2 per cent in Asia and the Pacific, 68.6 per cent in the Arab States, 40 per cent in the Americas, and just over 25 per cent in Europe and Central Asia (ILO, 2016).Some studies carried out on workplace accident or injuries have been done in manufacturing industries (Brisson et al., 1989;Kaminski, 2001), ports (Hooydonk, 2013), mining (Demba et al., 2013), fishing (Rapisarda et al. 2004) sawmill and forestry (Bode, Giwa, & Oke, 2001;Caruso et al., 2006;Folkard & Lombardi, 2006) industries and some small and medium scale industries across the globe.Most of these studies have highlighted the nature and extent of occupational injuries, extent or degree of exposure, and lack or presence of regulations put in place across various occupational climes.Also, most of these studies have come up with prevention as the most cost effective strategy to decrease disability and the high death toll in the workplace.Despite the burgeoning problem associated with workplace and various efforts at producing scholarly appreciation of such phenomena, few known studies in the country of study area have focused on different groups of automobile technicians (mechanics, welders and painters) (Jinadu, 1982(Jinadu, , 1990) ) and groups engaging in other occupation entirely such as paint industry, stone crushing industry (Awodele, et al, 2014;Aliyu, 2006) no such study has been carried out on occupational risks associated with roadside vulcanizers in the developing countries especially in Nigeria where informal self-employed automobile technicians dominate a sizeable proportion of workforce majority of whom are engaged in jobs classified as hazardous and risky.
It is therefore critical that the risks factor associated with informal trade like vulcanizing are carefully examined.This need becomes all the more necessary when workplace injury-related deaths have been projected to be the second leading cause of death, worldwide, by the year 2020 (Murray & Lopez, 1997).To achieve this, this study set out to assess the spatial distribution of vulcanizers in the study area, examine factors determining the choice of roadside for vulcanizing trade and evaluate risks that roadside vulcanizers are exposed to.

Study area
The study area is Ife Central Local Government Area in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Southwest of Nigeria (Figure 1).Over the years, Ife Central Local Government has been an important educational center in Nigeria especially with the visible presence of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife and Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital (OAUTH).In addition to these are private institutions of learning.The significance of these institutions is found in their employment generation capabilities which has drawn population to their town of situation.Though there are different modes of mobility in the study area, private ownership of cars is predominant.
Basically, roadside automobile technicians in Ife Central and by extension in most part of Nigeria exist as informal groups found either directly along the roadside or in a garage.The group though usually found together is usually made up of individuals with differing specialization belonging to one form of informal association or the other.Majority of vehicle owners and other patrons of their services patronize them because there are few authorized corporate automobile care service providers who mostly located in major cities and state capitals in the country; their services are on-the-go service and seem affordable and not bureaucratic.They are mostly manual in approach because of their little informal training.In most cases, they use obsolete equipment which make their work laborious and time taking.They are not controlled by any governmental arrangement and their choice of locations is mostly determined by their discretion and payment of some royalties in some cases to the site owner(s).
Increasing relevance of roadside automobile technicians is a fallout of increasing urbanization, increasing level of motorization in the society and government disinterest in enforcing formal organization of some informal activities in the study area.
Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.

Data sources and analysis
Primary and secondary data were used for this study.First, global positioning points of vulcanizers were taken from five major roads in the study area using GPS.The selection of these major roads was based on the busyness of the roads, which form the basis of attraction for locating vulcanizers business along the roads.In all, 113 points were captured, forming the entire sample frame.The significance of point capturing was to determine the spatial location of vulcanizers in the study area.Secondly, 111 questionnaires were distributed to roadside vulcanizers found at their trade posts during the administration exercise.The questionnaire was divided into two sections.The first section contained information on the social-economic characteristics of the technicians.The significance of this section was that the social and economic conditions of an individual are determinants of their level of exposure and vulnerability to some risks (Zakour, 2010;Kaniasty & Norris, 2009).Second section included questions on the respondents' choice of their trade location(s), factors influencing the choice of their locations, their rate and frequency of patronage, their awareness of the dangers of locating their trade by the roadside, whether or not they have experienced any danger in the course of their service, their willingness to relocate away from the location and some other questions addressing their vulnerability.It must be stated clearly that the questionnaire did not undergo rigorous validity test, but we conducted preliminary survey and face validity test for vulcanizers who were completely off the study location and those within the study location to established the genuineness of the questions contained in the questionnaire.The gap between when the time preliminary survey and main questionnaire administration were carried was 13 days.
For secondary data, IKONOS (2014) imagery of the study area was downloaded from Google Earth.Road networks of the study area were extracted, vectorized in ArcGIS 10.4.The essence of this was to create a map showing the distribution of vulcanizers in the study area.
Nearest Neighbour Analysis was performed to determine the spatial pattern of distribution of vulcanizers in the study area.Factor Analysis was carried out using Maximum Likelihood extraction method and the Varimax with Kaiser Normalization approach as factor rotation method.Dedobbeleer and Beland (1991) applied factorial analysis to study safety climate at the construction site.The purpose of factor analysis was to explore factors influencing respondents' decision in their choice of location of their business and to reduce many individual items into a Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.
fewer number of dimensions.Descriptive statistics such as frequency tables and graphs were used to present some of the risks that roadside vulcanizers are exposed to.Also, One-sample Non-parametric test (at α = 0.05) was conducted in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 to determine the level of significance of risk factors that vulcanizers are exposed to.

Distribution patterns of vulcanizers in the study area
Nearest Neighbour Index (NNI) was conducted using geostatistics to determine spatial distribution pattern of vulcanizers in the study area.NNI was calculated based on the average distance from each vulcanizer to its nearest neighbour as given below: The Nearest Neighbour Index is given as: 1) Dobs is the observed mean distance between each feature and its nearest neighbor.This is given as: and Dexp is the expected mean distance for the features given in a random pattern.Expected mean distance is expressed as: If the ratio is less than 1, the pattern exhibits clustering; if the index is greater than 1, the trend is toward dispersion or competition.The analysis returned five values as shown in Table 1.The result of the nearest neighbour analysis revealed a NNI of 3.498 indicating that spatial distribution of vulcanizers in the study area is dispersed and takes a competitive dimension.In other words, location of vulcanizing business is not due to chance but one that takes on uniform pattern between each other (Figure 2).In addition, Figure 3 shows a representation of the distribution patterns of vulcanizers in the study area.This patterns tend to be linear, and especially along the selected roads in the study area.

Factors determining the choice of vulcanizing trade location by the roadside
Factor analysis was used as a data reduction method in this study to reduce 14 variables selected as factors determining the choice of roadside by vulcanizers to more manageable underlying factors.The maximum likelihood extraction method was used to extract the most manageable variables while the varimax rotation method was chosen based on the assumption of factors independence.(1.031).Percentage of variance explained were given for proximity to traffic (14.090%), distance from home (11.148%), nearness to motor park (10.796%),Low competition (9.736%), High traffic volume (8.177%) and opportunity for shelter (7.367%).However, rotation sums of square loadings gave an optimized factor structure in a way that equalized the relative importance of the extracted factors.In this regard, proximity to traffic has a variance of 8.217%, distance from home (8.170%), nearness to motor park (8.039%), low competition (7.732%), high traffic volume (5.692%) and opportunity for shelter (4.438%).

Socioeconomic characteristics of respondents
This section provides information on sociodemographic characteristics of vulcanizers, From the questionnaire distributed to 111 out of 113 vulcanizers in all the major roads in the study area, results of the analysis revealed that majority of the vulcanizers sampled were between 31 and 50 years old.Also, educational attainment for the majority of the vulcanizers was not beyond secondary education.Further, more than half of the vulcanizers have spent at least 10 years on this profession.However, in terms of average income per day, very few of the sampled vulcanizers earned above ₦4000 per day, with most of them being patronized by motorcyclists more than any other type of patrons in the study area (Table 3).
Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.

Responses on location information and risk exposure
This section provides information on factors of location choice, knowledge of risks associated with such location, the experience of collision and other risks that roadside vulcanizers are exposed to in the study area.Results revealed that multiple flow/high traffic volume was the most important driving factor of location choice among vulcanizers, the majority of who located by the roadside.In terms of knowledge of risks associated with the location of their business by the roadside, 50 (45%) accepted they were aware of the associated danger while 61(55.0%) said they were not aware.Further analysis using Pearson Chi-square method at α = 0.05, with a χ2 value of 3.800 and p-value of 0.284 revealed that no significant association between level of education and knowledge of location risks.In spite of the risks associated with the location, some vulcanizers would not leave the location for fear of losing customers, the difficulty of relocation, as well as increasing distance from home.Because of location by the roadside, some of the vulcanizers have experienced collision at one time or the other.Such collision was due to drivers' recklessness, impatience on the part of drivers, over speeding, wrong overtaking by drivers, carelessness on the part of vulcanizers.In spite of the dangerous location and attendant risks associated with vulcanizing trade, the majority of the vulcanizers would not use any means to protect themselves while attending to customers.Personal interaction with those that claimed to protect themselves revealed that most of them only rolled tyres on one side of the road to provide obstructive stoppage for any coming vehicle or motorcycle-an act that has the tendency to heighten collision risk around the vulcanizers' trade location.However, further analysis revealed no association between level of education and use of protective guard by vulcanizers (χ 2 = 2.631; p-value of 0.452 at α = 0.05).
Apart from collision risk that vulcanizers were exposed to, other risks exposed to were reported in their order of experience (Table 4).Further analysis using the nonparametric one-sample test at significance level (α = 0.05) revealed factors such as traffic noise, noise from pumping machine, a tyre burst, exposure to weather condition and robbery attack as significant risk exposed to.
However, responses on relocation revealed that some of these vulcanizers had been warned of relocation from the roadside especially in government's preparation for road reconstruction and expansion but were undaunted by the warnings especially seeing that government on its part was not prepared and for the thought of not getting more lucrative location than their present locations (Table 4).
Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.

Discussion
This study was carried out to assess the vulnerability of roadside vulcanizers to location-based risks.The objectives were to the examined spatial distribution pattern of vulcanizers in the study area, evaluate factors of location decision as well as to assess risks that roadside vulcanizers are exposed to.113 vulcanizes were found along the major roads of the study area out of which 111 were interacted with through questionnaire administration and personal observation.
Generally, the location of vulcanizing trade along the road in the study area may not be a global standard for the location of such small scale business type, but it still follows the economic argument that geography, especially of site and location as well as accessibility is considered a decisive factor in different fields of business performance.This is more emphasized by Weber (1929) who hypothesized that geography impacted on the business result when located close to other economic agents and with ease of access to external resources.
Results of the analyses revealed that the majority of the vulcanizers did not have formal education beyond the secondary school level.Though no question was asked whether those that had secondary education actually finished through or dropped out, this is alluding to findings that concentration of high population in informal services is from the group with low level of education and other special formal skills (Taha, 2000;Chattopadhyay, 2005).In terms of choice Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.
of location of their business by the roadside, multiple flows of traffic and proximity to traffic dominated factors of consideration in the choice selection, it was clear that all other factors though with insignificant preference still have to bear with the knowledge of the environment where respondents were residing.Thus, there varied responses about the choice of location were premised on the relationship between individual vulcanizers and location points.This finding was in line with those findings that have highlighted the importance of individual's multi-faceted relationships with the community where their businesses are located (Reynolds & White, 1997;Jack & Anderson, 2002) and with those studies which emphasized the need of business services to be geographically close to their clients for necessary transaction to take place (Aslesen & Jakobsen, 2007;Duranton & Puga, 2005).
Further, findings on the average income of a vulcanizer in the study area which revealed high average gross income of between ₦2000 and ₦3000 was in consonance with part of the definition of any informal sector business which is described among other things, as, having a generally poor working condition; low productivity; use of production methods that are often harmful to the environment and unstable remuneration (Baron, 2005;Cuevas et al. 2009) and studies which have demonstrated that informal employment is generally associated with lower wages than formal employment (Angel-Urdinola & Tanabe, 2012; Bargain & Kwenda, 2011).
In terms of danger exposed to, findings revealed that 31.5% of vulcanizers have experienced collision at one time or the other.Apart from the collision, other risks exposed to included traffic noise (88.3%), exposure to unfair weather (82.9%), dust and smoke (57.7%), noise from the pump (30.6%), occasional tyre burst (28.8%), and robbery attack (13.5%).All these risk factors agreed to some general findings that informal business owners are exposed to some unpleasant working conditions.For instance, the emergence of dust and smoke as one of the prominent risks exposed to by vulcanizers is in consonance with findings that situate dust, smoke, vapour and fumes among common hazards that small-scale workers are exposed to especially in countries like Nigeria where regulation of emission control from vehicles and industries are lacking (Ahmad et al., 2016;Ali, et al., 2016;Akintunde, 2016).Again, exposure to traffic noise and noise from the pump, which though may not be considered as debilitating because of lack of health data, is in consonance with studies such as (Taheri, 2006;and Koehncke et al., 2003) who observed environmental noise as a risk factor in other workplace other than the vulcanizing trade.Whereas, 45% have the understanding that location of their trade is dangerous but their resolute to remain at these dangerous locations, though may contradict concept of sustainable livelihood, emphasized findings that social and economic threats to daily needs especially food security, are always more pressing than threats from rare seasonal hazards (Chambers & Conway, 1991).
However, in terms of the use of personal protective equipment or measure which is considered as helpful in reducing the risk that exposure to a hazard will injure the person, or the severity of an injury if one does occur.Although the hazard still exists, the potential for injury seems to be mitigated by the use of PPE.The result of the findings which showed that 39.6% claimed to be protecting themselves but with further personal chat, only said to be using the tyre to guard themselves when inflating tyres on the roadside.This gave attribution to the previous finding by Kamal et al. (2016) who reported that workers in small-scale industries such as welding, auto repair, and body paint workshops, work in unhygienic conditions, are daily exposed to fuels and chemicals, and rarely use PPEs and other protective measures that can minimize health risks.Also, the association between level of education and use of protective measure revealed that low-level education is a contributory factor to non-use of protective equipment among vulcanizers in the study area.This finding supported previous findings that finding that low education level may contribute to non-use personal protective measures among small scale business workers, as they do not know, recognize and appreciate the significance of personal protective equipment (Ahmad et al., 2017;Kumar et al., 2013;Abraham et al., 2015;Taha 2000).

CONCLUSION
This study was the first of its kind in the assessment of occupational risks that roadside vulcanizers were exposed to in Ife Central Local Government Area and by extension, in entire Nigeria.This study uniquely contributed to issues on occupational risk, injuries and accidents which have majorly been skewed towards the organized sector and informal sector other than Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.
self-employed informal vulcanizers with peculiar location characteristics.The study observed dispersed spatial distribution pattern of vulcanizers also highlighted factors influencing their choice of location to include among others, proximity to traffic, multiple and high volume traffic, good open space, personal preference and nearness to the city centre as major determinants of choice of locations.However, the study revealed that nearly half of the sampled vulcanizers had the knowledge of the danger associated with their location while more than one-third had experienced collision at one time or the other.Other risks exposed to included traffic noise, dust, and smoke, noise from the pump, a tyre burst, exposure to weather conditions and robbery attack.The study recommended that roadside vulcanizers should be relocated from the roadside to reduce potential mortality from road collision and must be trained on the need to adopt protective equipment as a way of reducing the severity of injuries when at risk of sustaining any.
However, the study has a limitation of data which could have provided information on known previous risks or death cases among roadside vulcanizers.This would have provided a basis upon which this study would stand.Nevertheless, further studies can be carried out to expand on health challenges of roadside vulcanizing trade and possibly map out site suitability analysis for the relocation of their trade.

Table 1 .
Average nearest neighbour summary Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.
Estimating occupational risks associated with roadside automobile vulcanizing trade in a part of southwestern Nigeria Olapoju et al.
Table 2 provided valuableinformation concerning factors necessary to adequately describe the factors influencing vulcanizers decision regarding location choice.Going by the "rule of thumb" of retaining factors with eigenvalues greater than one, six factors were extracted.These included proximity to traffic (1.973), distance from home (1.561), nearness to motor park (1.511), low competition (1.363), high traffic volume (1.145) and opportunity for shelter

Table 2 .
Variance explained by each component

Table 3 .
Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents