Hypertension: an ongoing health hazard in Nigerian workers.

The aim of this study was to explore the effects of occupation on blood pressure in an urban, male, employed population, eliminating life-style/urbanization effects which were not separated from occupation in earlier studies. In May 1983, a cross-sectional study of arterial blood pressure was carried out in 594 policemen aged 20-63 years (mean age, 26.2 years) and 521 male civil servants aged 20-63 years (mean age, 28.6 years) who acted as controls. Blood pressure was recorded on the right arm with an automatic sphygmomanometer. The mean of two cuff inflations was taken as the recorded blood pressure. A total of 175 civil servants (33.6%) and 145 policemen (24.4%) had blood pressure greater than or equal to 140/90 mmHg (p less than 0.001), while 49 policemen (8.2%) and 46 civil servants (8.8%) had blood pressure greater than or equal to 160/95 mmHg; this difference was not statistically significant. With the two-sample t test, however, there were no significant differences between policemen and civil servants except for systolic blood pressure at ages 20-24 years (p less than 0.001) and 30-34 years (p less than 0.001). Mean systolic pressure was higher in all age groups up to 45-49 years in civil servants; for ages 50-54 years and above, mean systolic pressure was higher among policemen. This study supports the view that differences in earlier reports were due to life-style/urbanization effects rather than to occupation per se.