Heart rate and energy expenditure during garbage collection in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Physiological workload is used to estimate the physical demand of tasks in the workforce, but limited information is available for the various work activities in developing countries. Eighty-three randomly selected male workers participated in the present study, aimed at assessing the physiological workload of garbage collection (GC) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Heart rate (HR) was obtained on four consecutive workdays. Energy expenditure (EE) was extrapolated from heart rate data based on individual laboratory-established heart rate/oxygen consumption curve in 70 workers. Mean HR during GC was 104.0 +/- 11.7 bpm (+/- SD), representing 56.9 +/- 7.5% of maximum heart rate. EE was 1608.3 +/- 738.5 kcal for an average of 293.1 +/- 103.9 minutes of work per day. Based on all measurements, work in garbage collection in Rio de Janeiro can be considered excessively heavy. These data emphasize the need to develop appropriate classification of workload to be used in health-related research and in the development of maximum acceptable work time in association with the physiological workload, particularly in developing countries.