Wyatt Martinez

4/10/2017

Article Assignment
Impact of work performance on body proportions in Blacksmiths: A
somatometric analysis
Introduction

Dr .AjitPal Singh et al. (2012) in his article he proposed that,

Traditional Occupation is the one, which a person acquires or inherits from
his parents and passes it on to the next generation. He concluded that Gross
body size and other morphological characteristics of a person involved in
such type of occupations provide clues regarding the developmental
adaptations that people have undergone in response to variety of work
factors or stresses. In his introduction, he proposed that different
occupations have different effects on a persons morphological
characteristics.

Materials and Methods

This article purposed that the impact of physical work performance

defines a certain body morphology. In this case, the author did a study on
200 males ranging from 30 to 40 years that worked as a Punjab Blacksmith
and measured the upper limbs, lower limbs, and trunk region on both right
and left sides of the body. What the study concluded was that Blacksmiths
have a balanced endomorph body type and they showed maximum bilateral
asymmetry in the upper region of the body and direction asymmetry towards
the right side of the body.

The author finds his evidence in 6 different studies and conducted

them into tables. Table 1 depicts the mean and standard deviation values of
various anthropometric measurements of Blacksmiths. Table 2 depicts
values of gross body measurement, skinfolds, body circumferences, body
breadths and segmental lengths in Blacksmiths. Table 3 shows the mean
values of individual bilateral differences and trends in relative index of
asymmetry in the skinfolds, body circumferences, segmental lengths, and
body breadths. In Table 4 he measures Body Mass Index of Blacksmiths. In
Table 5 he measured Waits Hip Ratio of Blacksmiths.

Results

When conducting his evidence, the results he finds is that Blacksmith indeed
have a different body type compared to other occupations that people have.