Environmental Health Problems and their Resolutions at Automobile Repair Shops at the Sakon Nakhon Municipality

Abstract

This research is a descriptive cross‐sectional study. The objectives of this study are
to investigate automobile garages and car repainting chops for environmental
health problems and prevention as well as nuisance control methods. Information
was collected from February until March, 2012 at the Sakon Nakorn Municipality.
Direct observation and questionnaires were used for data collection at 49
locations: 26 automobile garages, 16 car repainting chops, and 7 companies selling
automobiles and running car repainting garages as well. Also a brainstorming
workshop was organized for a nuisance control networking scheme at Sakon
Nakorn Municipality in order to find solutions for environmental health problems
of automobile garages and car repainting chops. The results of this study showed
that of the 23 car repainting garages, 16 had spray paint rooms and 37.5% of the
spray paint rooms did not meet safety standards. Eight car repainting garages did
not have fire extinguishers. All owners of car repainting garages provided their
staff with appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE). However, only 42.9%
of staff usually used the PPE with 57.1% of staff using PPE only sometimes. It was
found that almost all garages did not meet some environmental health
management standards: 71.4% of the garages did not have air pollution
management; 81.6% of the garages did not have wastewater management; 53.1%
of the garages did not have hazardous waste management; and 79.6% of the
garages did not have noise management. These problems warranted the
organization of the workshop to find appropriate solutions. The local organization
responsible for nuisance control and health hazard prevention, should use the
results of this study as a guideline to co‐operate with the relevant car repair chops
to effectively implement a monitoring and auditing scheme for preventing
environmental health nuisances related to automobile repainting garages.