Air quality assessment and the health impact towards stall workers at night markets in Selangor

In plain sight, it can be seen that the surrounding air at night markets are polluted with smokes from cooking activities which can create health risk to the night market workers. However, the actual level of air quality at night markets in Selangor is unknown, whether it exceed a standard limit or if it is at a safe level for the workers to inhale, and if it cause respiratory health symptoms. This research uses a Handheld DustTrak DRX Aerosol Monitor 8534 and 3M QuesTempo 36 Area Heat Stress Monitors (WBGT) to measure air quality parameters of PM2.5 , WBGTₒ and relative humidity accompanied by questionnaire form to assess the presence of respiratory health symptoms. The air quality monitors was put at a chosen monitoring site close to the stalls to take a grab sample of the air quality. Meanwhile, the questionnaire is filled by selected 60 night market workers. The result obtained is an exceeded level of PM2.5 (mg/m³) at a mean of 0.059 ± 0.195 and high level of relative humidity at a mean 75.917 ± 7.082, while the level of WBGTₒ (°C) does not exceed the standard limit at a mean of 27.477 ± 1.045. Besides, cough symptoms shows a prevalence of 10% among workers that has worked for a decade or less while an exceeded WBGTₒ has a significant prevalence to presence of cough with phlegm at 4.071. it is suggested for future study to measure other parameters, include lung function test and expand the scale of research.