• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.73-86
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• 2004

In order to estimate the post-ingestion bioavailability of heavy metals and to assess the risk of adverse health effects on human exposure to toxic heavy metals, environmental geochemical surveys were undertaken around the Dogok Au-Ag-Cu and the Hwacheon Au-Ag-Pb-Zn mine sites. Human risk assessment of toxic heavy metals was performed with the results of the SBET(simple bioavailability extraction test) analysis for soil and chemical analytical data for crop plant and water. Arsenic and other heavy metals were highly elevated in tailings from the Dogok(218 As mg/kg, 90.2 Cd mg/kg, 3,053 Cu mg/kg, 9,473 Pb mg/kg, 14,500 Zn mg/kg) and the Hwacheon(72 As mg/kg, 12.4 Cd mg/kg. 578 Pb mg/kg, 1,304 Zn mg/kg) mines. These significant concentrations can impact on soils and waters around the tailing dumps. The quantities of As, Cd and Zn extracted from paddy soils in the Hwacheon mine using the SBET analysis were 55.4%, 20.8% and 26.4% bioavailability, respectively, and for farmland soils in the Dogok mine, 40.8%, 37.6% and 33.0% bioavailability, respectively. From the results of human risk assessment, HI(Hazard Index) value exceeded 1.0 for As in the Hwacheon mine and for Cd in the Dogok mine. Thus, toxic risks for As and Cd exist via exposure(ingestion) of contaminated soil, water and rice grain in these mine sites. The cancer risk for As by the consumption of rice and groundwater in the Hwacheon mine area was 8E-4 and 1E-4, respectively. This risk level exceeds the acceptable risk(1 in 100,000) for regulatory purpose. Therefore, regular ingestion of locally grown rice and ground-water by the local population can pose a potential health threat due to long-term arsenic exposure.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.201-210
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• 2007

Pollution by chemical substances such as POPs, EDCs and PBTs in the ecosystem has become more complex and varied, increasing the possibility of irreversible damage to human health or the ecosystem. It is necessary to have a exposure assessment in a multi-media environment for various chemical substances is required for efficient management. This study applied MUSEM(Multi-media Simplebox-systems Environmental Model), a multimedia environmental model that can simultaneously evaluate the possibility of exposure of hundreds of chemical substances in order to efficiently manage chemical substances that can have negative impact on human health or ecological environment through environmental contamination. MUSEM executed the modeling for Japan by setting all 47 prefectures of japan as the regional area for 62 chemical substances and the rest of the territory of japan, excluding regional area, as the continental area and made the estimation of concentration among environment media in each administrative area and made the sensitivity analysis on Tokyo area. The results of simulation for chemical distribution showed that most of the target chemicals located in water region. The result of sensitivity analysis for octanol-water partition rate showed that the concentration change of soil in urban/industrial area and sediment in freshwater was high. In the case of sensitivity analysis for degradation rate showed that the concentration change of freshwater, soil in urban/industrial area, and sediment in freshwater was high.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1 s.57
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• pp.20-28
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• 2005

Major petrochemical companies in the USA and the EU map out the strategies step-by-step hazard evaluation for the efficient risk management. They adopted the risk screening methods, such as Dow fire & explosion index, as a preliminary phase to execute detailed evaluation such as QRA (Quantitative Risk Assessment). In this study, The FEDI (Fire & Explosion Damage Index), which a kind of risk screening method proposed by Khan and Abbasi, was applied to the BTX plant in Korea. We showed that the FEDI can be effectively used to classify the hazard potential by comparison of the result from the FEDI and the result from QRA. And we showed that the characteristics and the quantities of chemical are the factors which have a largest effect on fire and explosion by executing relative sensitivity analysis of the FEDI. In conclusion, if the FEDI was applied as a preliminary phase of HAZOP, more efficient hazard evaluation can be possible.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.47-52
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• 2005

The wide use of metal dusts have been found in industrial field and many dust explosion accidents occur by fire spread of dust layer. In this study, we developed a new experimental device to examine fire and explosion characteristics of the dust layer. Aspects of the burning zone over metals(Mg, Zr, Ta, Ti, etc) and PMMA(Polymethyl methacrylate) dust layers have been investigated experimentally to clarify behaviors (Spread rate and quenching distance) and effects of $N_2$ surrounding gas on the fire spread over metal dust layers. From the experimental result, it was found that the spread rate of metal dusts is larger than PMMA, the dependability of spread rate over the thickness of dust layer is small, and the minimum oxygen concentration of spread flame over Mg dust layer is 3.6-3.7 vol%. Since high correlation between the spread rate and the reciprocal of quenching distance was seen, relative risk prediction in those inflammable parameters can be predicted.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.63-68
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• 2009

The safety culture of an organization is very complex and hard to study, but it is possible to examine norms that make up the culture. This paper describes of a Process Safety Management (PSM) climate assessment tool developed in high risk industry such as chemical industries. The main purpose is to develop measuring software tool behaviors by examining their nature and strength and by analysing underlying factors that offer explanations for attitudinal differences. We reviewed the current techniques and literatures available to assess safety climate and culture, conducted focus group interviews and discussions. Based on the reviews and focus group, PSM climate assessment questionnaires and an online application program were developed. A pilot assessment was done at a chemical plant in Korea and the safety climate profile was completed. It was suggested to have a constant feedback from different sectors of industry to improve the application.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.173-185
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• 2019

Objectives: The objectives of this study are to evaluate the accuracy and precision of exposure model ECETOC TRA v.3.1 by comparing model predictions with repeated exposure measurements in Korean workplaces and to investigate the applicability of ECETOC TRA to Korean workplace exposure assessment in K-REACH. Methods: Measured values and work conditions for 14 kinds of chemicals collected from exposure field surveys conducted at 10 companies in Korea were utilized for this study. All possible process categories (PROCs) considered to be relevant to each work process classification were selected and applied to ECETOC TRA as major determining parameters. In order to quantify the accuracy of the model, the lack of agreement (bias, relative bias, precision) was calculated and the risk ratios for each exposure situation between estimated and measured were also compared. Results: The estimated values varied between five and 25 times according to the PROCs for all exposure situations (ESs) based on tasks/chemicals. The results showed that most of the estimated values were below the measured values, and just 13 of 53 tasks were above the measured values. The overall bias and precision were $-2.91{\pm}1.62$ with ECETOC TRA, and we found that ECETOC TRA showed a low level of conservatism when applied to Korean workplaces, similar to previous studies. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the existed PROC codes have limitations in fully covering various ESs in Korea. In order to improve the applicability of ECETOC TRA in K-REACH, the addition of new PROCs for Korean industries are necessary.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.904-911
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• 2021

For the safety assessment of microbiological and chemical hazards in dried sea mustard, fifteen samples of dried sea mustards Undaria pinnatifida were purchased from the supermarkets distributed throughout Korea. The contamination levels of total viable bacteria, coliforms, Escherichia coli, and nine pathogenic bacteria [Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Bacillus cereus, Vibrio spp., Clostridium perfringens, Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), Yersinia enterocolitica and Campylobacter jejuni/coli] were quantitatively or qualitatively assessed. Also, the heavy metals (lead, cadmium, total mercury, and inorganic arsenic), and radioactivity (¹³¹I, ¹³⁴CS+¹³⁷CS) were quantitatively assessed. This microbial and chemical analysis was performed using standard methods in Korean food code. The total viable bacteria ranged from 4.3×10² (5.0×10-1.5×10³) CFU/g. Coliforms and E. coli were not detected in all samples (ND, <1 log₁₀ CFU/g). All nine pathogenic bacteria were qualitatively detected as negative. The contamination levels of lead, cadmium, total mercury, and inorganic arsenic were 0.036 (0.015-0.051), 0.117 (0.088-0.156), 0.030 (0.017-0.048), and 0.058 (0.056-0.064) mg/kg, respectively. Radioactivity was also not detected in any sample. The microbial contamination levels determined in the current study may be potentially used as basis for performing microbial risk assessments of dried sea mustards.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.88-99
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• 2021

In this study, a land-based marine closed mesocosm (LMCM) experiment was performed to objectively assess the initial stability of an artificial ecosystem experiment against biological and non-biological factors when evaluating ecosystem risk assessment. Changes in the CV (coefficient of value) amplitude were used as data to analyze the stability of the experimental system. The CV of the experimental variables in the LMCM groups (200, 400, 600, and 1,000 L) was maintained within the range of 20-30% for the abiotic variables in this study. However, the difference in CV amplitude in biological factors such as chlorophyll-a, phytoplankton, and zooplankton was high in the 600 L and 1,000 L LMCM groups. This result was interpreted as occurring due to the lack of control over biological variables at the beginning of the experiment. In addition, according to the ANOVA results, significant differences were found in biological contents such as COD (chemical oxygen demand), chlorophyll-a, phosphate, and zooplankton in the CV values between the LMCM groups(p<0.05). In this study, the stabilization of biological variables was necessary to to control and maintain the rate of changes in initial biological variables except for controllable water quality and nutrients. However, given the complexity of the eco-physiological activities of large-scale LMCMs and organisms in the experimental group, it was difficult to do. In conclusion, artificial ecosystem experiments as a scientific tool can distinguish biological and non-biological factors and compare and analyze clear endpoints. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to establish research objectives, select content that can maintain stability, and introduce standardized analysis techniques that can objectively interpret the experimental results.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.205-216
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• 2024

Recently, seismic Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) methods have been developed for process plants, such as gas plants, oil refineries, and chemical plants. The framework originated from the PSA of nuclear power plants, which aims to assess the risk of reactor core damage. The original PSA method was modified to adopt the characteristics of a process plant whose purpose is continuous operation without shutdown. Therefore, a fault tree, whose top event is shut down, was constructed and transformed into a Bayesian Network (BN), a probabilistic graph model, for efficient risk-informed decision-making. In this research, the fault tree-based BN from the previous research is further developed to consider the multi-hazard of earthquake-induced fire and explosion (EQ-induced F&E). For this purpose, an event tree describing the occurrence of fire and explosion from a release is first constructed and transformed into a BN. And then, this BN is connected to the previous BN model developed for seismic PSA. A virtual plot plan of a gas plant is introduced as a basis for the construction of the specific EQ-induced F&E BN to test the proposed BN framework. The paper demonstrates the method through two examples of risk-informed decision-making. In particular, the second example verifies how the proposed method can establish a repair and retrofit strategy when a shutdown occurs in a process plant.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.60-70
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• 2011

The sediment removal index derived from the chemical contaminants, $CI_{HC}$, is currently in use to identify and define the spatial extent of the contaminated sediments in the sea. In order to analyze the sensitivity of the ecological and human risk associated with contaminated sediment, we evaluated five hypothetical contaminated sediments, whose $CI_{HC}$ values are identical but consisted of different contaminant contents, using $TrophicTrace^{(R)}$ model dedicated to evaluate sediment risk, against the resident greenling (Hexagrammos otakii) and humans by calculating No-Observed-Adverse-Effect-Level based Toxicity Quotient (NOAEL TQ) and Lowest-Observed-Adverse-Effect-Level based Toxicity Quotient (LOAEL TQ), and cancer risks and hazard indices (HI), respectively, based on the site conceptual model and exposure assumptions of fish ingestion to human receptor populations. NOAEL and LOAEL TQ values varied as much as a factor of 2 among 5 hypothetical sediments. Chemical element specific contribution to the carcinogenic risk and HI varied also greatly in these sediments. The reason for this significant dissimilarity in ecological and human risk stems from the different risk of each contaminant to the resident fish and human receptor. When the conceptual food web model is constructed for the target biological species for a given site, the ecological and human risk analysis considering trophic transfer of contaminants will add a ecosystem based tool for the management of contaminated sediments.