O uso do tabaco entre trabalhadores técnicos administrativos em educação de uma universidade pública do estado de Minas Gerais

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization (2011), tobacco use remains as the leading preventable cause of death for 6 million people worldwide each year. Smoking causes loss of work productivity (due to illness or death) and early retirements and pensions, being harmful to smokers and nonsmokers. Many strategies have been established in order to reduce tobacco sales, to hedge exposure to environmental tobacco pollution and to support treatment for dependents. The professional environment is favorable to approach workers and to implement prevention programs that encourage changes in lifestyle. This study aimed (a) to characterize the sociodemographic profile of the technical and administrative employees of the public University of Juiz de Fora – MG; (b) to identify the occurrence of tobacco use, the degree of dependence on tobacco consumption and the frequency of exposure to tobacco pollution amongst these workers; and (c) to correlate the data on the degree of dependence to tobacco use with socioeconomic, age and sex variables of the study participants. This is a descriptive-exploratory study, cross-sectional, in which participated 721 administrative technicians in effective education of the public University of Juiz de Fora – MG. The data was collected through a self-managed survey. The issues considered were related to the sociodemographic profile, tobacco use, exposure to tobacco pollution and degree of smoking dependence, verified by the Fagerström Questionnaire. We aimed to associate the degree of dependency with the sociodemographic variables. Descriptive statistics for measures of frequency and bivariate were performed with the SPSS software, version 15.0. The results showed that the population is composed similar number of men and women, with ages from 51 to 60 years, white, post-graduated, married or in a stable union, with a family income of ten or more minimum wages and working exclusively in the public sector. 12.2% of them used tobacco, with initiation of the habit in the youth. The predominant degree of dependence was very low and low, with a mean age of 24.1 years. There was no statistical significance between the degree of dependency and the sociodemographic variables analyzed. The exposure to environmental tobacco pollution was 34.5 %. It is hoped that this study supports further investigation of this underexplored issue amongst workers, and subsidizes health promotion, prevention and the tobacco use cessation among them.