Investigation on the Health and Safety Hazards of Construction Workers

The construction workers might be at the risk of many occupational injuries and illnesses. To protect workers from various hazards, industrial health and hygiene systems were specified for the construction workers by law. It is important to know the actual health and safety(H&S) conditions by tasks and the characteristics of injuries and illnesses of construction workers. This study was designed to investigate the actual conditions of construction workers exposed to various harmful substances and work elements including evaluation of health status of each worker and general H&S system. Questionnaire was sent to 600 construction workers nationwide and totally 367 people responded to it having 61.67% of response rate. The common construction hazards were dust(29.6%), noise(19.3%), repetitive motions(12.0%), handling excessive heavy materials(11.2%) in order. The repetitive motions and handling heavy materials related to muscle disorders accounted for 23.2%. The accident and injury types were in order of overexertion, falling, overturning, dropping or flying, electric shock, collision, etc.