• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.413-424
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• 2021

Health impact assessment in the environmental impact assessment is conducted to determine whether to exceed the standard of each single substance and to establish appropriate reduction measures. In some development projects, although all substances in risk assessment meet the standard, exposure concentration is very close to it. However, considering the cumulative exposure of all substances, health effects are likely to occur considerably severer than those of individual substances, so it is necessary to prepare a concrete and improved methodology for integrating evaluation of emissions to identify the health effects actually exposed to receptors of living things. This study established the definition of cumulative risk assessment through overseas advanced cases and domestic and foreign literature reviews, and proposed a methodology for utilizing cumulative risk assessment considering health effects on multiple substances when developing industrial complexes. Applied by the proposed methodology, integrated indicators forfourtypes of hazardous heavy metals (Ni, Cr⁶⁺, Cd, As) emitted from industrial complexes were calculated, and applicability was tested with case of the industrial complex development projects conducted over the last decade (2011-2020).

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2013

Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the health risk of workers exposed to butyl glycidyl ether to prevent them from developing occupational diseases. Methods: The workplaces that coat floor with epoxy were selected and the samples were collected and analyzed with NIOSH 1616 Method. We calculate workplace reference concentration using with NOAEL estimated by the study of Anderson et al. in 1978. Risk was calculated by the ratio of exposure to workplace reference concentration. Monte-Carlo simulation was performed to derivate the median, cumulative 90%, and cumulative 95% value by using Crystal Ball. Results: Butyl glycidyl ether is a skin, eye irritator and can result in central nervous system depression, allergic reaction. NOAEL was 38 ppm and workplace reference concentration was calculated as 0.73 ppm corrected with uncertainty factors. Geometric mean was 1.152 ppm and geometric standard deviation was 1.522 by the workplace environment measurement. The median, cumulative 90%, and cumulative 95% value of risk were calculated as 1.617, 1.934, and 2.092, respectively. Conclusions: Not only cumulative 90% and cumulative 95% value but also the median of risk is higher than 1.0 by the risk characterization, so it can do a lot of harm to workers. Therefore, the process of derivating workplace reference concentration and the appropriacy of the uncertainty factors should be re-examined.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.320-328
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• 2011

This research proposes comprehensive models for analyzing common cause failures (CCF) due to cumulative shocks and to assess system reliability under the CCF. The proposed cumulative shock models are based on the binomial failure rate (BFR) model. Six kinds of models are proposed so as to explain diverse cumulative shock phenomena. The models are composed of the initial failure probability, shape parameter, and the total shock number. Some parameters of the proposed models can not be explicitly estimated, so we adopt the Expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm in order to obtain the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) for the parameters. By estimating the parameters for the cumulative shock models, the system reliability with CCF can be assessed sequentially according to the number of cumulative shocks. The result can be utilizes in dynamic probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), aging studies, or risk management for nuclear power plants. Replacement or maintenance policies can also be developed based on the proposed model.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.444-453
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• 2014

Inequality of environmental impact is forecast to deepen due to the damage of environmental risk by the interaction between environmental and social inequalities causing more harms to environmentally vulnerable population. This study assessed the integrated cumulative impact of Seoul using Environmental Health Screening Tool developed by Environmental Protection Agency of California. In order to screen vulnerable area to environmental health, 10 indexes have been selected according to the environmental burden of exposure to environment and public health effects, population characteristics of sensitive populations and socio-economic factors. As a result of assessment conducted on cumulative impact of Seoul for years 2009~2011 through Environmental Health Screening Tool, risk factor for districts of Gangseo and Gangnam of Seoul showed high - Gangseo area indicated high risk factor both in environmental burden and population characteristics, while Gangnam area appeared high in environmental burden. The result of survey will be able to suggest scientific basis to push through fair and effective environmental policy in consideration of environment vulnerable population.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2001

Risk assessment traditionally are conducted on individual chemicals; however, humans are exposed to multiple chemicals in daily life. The organophosphorus (OP) pesticides are considered in a single risk assessment because they act by a common mechanism of toxicity, and there is likely to be expose to multiple OP pesticides simultaneously or sequentially. The OP pesticides act by inhibiting the enzyme acetylcholinesterasc (AChE) and have available extensive database. AChE is widely distributed throughout the body, most importantly in the nervous system. Inhibition of AChE results in accumulation of acetylcholine in the nervous system that results in clinical signs of cholinergic toxicity, including increased salivation and lacrimation, nausea and vomiting, muscle fasciculation, lethargy and fatigue, among others. To conduct an exposure assessment for pesticides in the diet, we need to know the food consumption patterns of the populations, and the pesticide residue levels in the foods that are consumed. This study was conducted to identify cumulative dietary risk due to multiple OP pesticides that can be exposed through various foods. Total 22 food samples including cereals, vegetables and fruits were collected randomly two times from food markets in several sites (4 cities). The subjected foods were selected by regarding of highly consumed foods to general Korean people. The 12 OP pesticides including Acephate, Azinphos-methyl, Chlorpyrifos, and Diazinon were monitored. For the exposure assessment, general adult group of 60 kg body weight was regarded as target population and food consumption data suggested by Lee et al. (2000) were used as consumed value of individual food. Analyses of samples for OP pesticides have been carried out according to the multiclass multiresidue analysis method and acephate and methamidophos analysis method of Korea Food Code. In general the levels of OP pesticides found in the food samples were very low or not detected.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.277-290
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to identify the problems of environmental impact assessment(EIA) and to suggest new EIA technology. The problems of EIA in Korea can be summarized as follows. First, the EIA does not reflect the impact of policy, plan and program on environment. Second, the project EIA does not consider the cumulative impacts such as additive impacts, synergistic impacts, threshold/saturation impacts, induced and indirect impacts, time-crowded impacts, and space-crowded impacts. Third, the EIA techniques in Korea are not standardized. Finally, the present EIA suggests only alternatives to reduce adverse impacts. To solve above-mentioned problems, the development of new EIA technology is essential. First, the new EIA technology should be developed toward pollution prevention technology and comprehensive and integrated environmental management technology. Second, new fields of EIA for pollution prevention contain strategic environmental assessment, cumulative impacts assessment, socio-economic impact assessment, cyber EIA and EIA technology necessary after the reunification of Korean Peninsula. Third, EIA technology for integrated environmental management contains the development of integated environment assessment system and the development of packaged EIA technology. The EIA technology for integrated environmental assessment system contains (1) development of integrated impact assessment technology combining air/water quality model, GIS and remote sensing, (2) integrated impact assessment of EIA, traffic impact assessment, population impact assessment and disaster impact assessment. (3) development of integrated technology combining risk assessment and EIA (4) development of integrated technology of life cycle assessment and EIA, (5) development of integrated technology of spatial planning and EIA, (6) EIA technology for biodiversity towards sustainable development, (7) mathematical model and GIS based location decision techniques, and (8) environmental monitoring and audit. Furthermore, there are some fields which need packaged EIA technology. In case of dam development, urban or industrial complex development, tourist development, landfill or combustion facilities construction, electric power plant development, development of port, road/rail/air port, is necessary the standardized and packaged EIA technology which considers the common characteristics of the same kind of development project.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.108-119
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• 2024

Objectives: Abrupt changes in air pollution levels associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak present a unique opportunity to evaluate the effects of air pollution on influenza risk, at a time when emission sources were less active and personal hygiene practices were more rigorous. Methods: This time-series study examined the relationship between influenza cases (n=22 874) and air pollutant concentrations from 2018 to 2021, comparing the timeframes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in and around Thailand's Khon Kaen province. Poisson generalized additive modeling was employed to estimate the relative risk of hospitalization for influenza associated with air pollutant levels. Results: Before the COVID-19 outbreak, both the average daily number of influenza hospitalizations and particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 ㎛ or less (PM_2.5) concentration exceeded those later observed during the pandemic (p<0.001). In single-pollutant models, a 10 ㎍/m³ increase in PM_2.5 before COVID-19 was significantly associated with increased influenza risk upon exposure to cumulative-day lags, specifically lags 0-5 and 0-6 (p<0.01). After adjustment for co-pollutants, PM_2.5 demonstrated the strongest effects at lags 0 and 4, with elevated risk found across all cumulative-day lags (0-1, 0-2, 0-3, 0-4, 0-5, and 0-6) and significantly greater risk in the winter and summer at lag 0-5 (p<0.01). However, the PM_2.5 level was not significantly associated with influenza risk during the COVID-19 outbreak. Conclusions: Lockdown measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic could mitigate the risk of PM_2.5-induced influenza. Effective regulatory actions in the context of COVID-19 may decrease PM_2.5 emissions and improve hygiene practices, thereby reducing influenza hospitalizations.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.24-35
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• 1998

Cumulative trauma disorders(CTDs) have been a growing problems for US and European industries with higher incidence rate every year. The increase and their associated costs has led companies to form committes and implement programs to address this problem. In our country, we have just started to recognize and to work on the problems in industry. This study conducted an ergonomic analysis for typical jobs of ship building industry which was not usually surveyed for CTD problem. A baseline CTD checklist which was supposed to do a risk assessment was developed and applied in this study. Initially, we considered five major parts in the checklist which consisted of personal, frequency, posture, force, and miscellaneous information. Most jobs in ship building industry were much different from typical assembly work and VDT work that have been major part of the previous CTD studies. Specifically, job characteristics in terms of frequency and posture were quite different. There were relatively long cycle time, awkward postures for whole body (not just for upper extremities). Also, CTD risk scores based on checklist were a lot higher than the scores for VDT jobs which was a case of preceding application of the checklist. Specifically, grinding jobs turned out to be the most risky one in terms of CTDs. In conclusion, usual CTD prevention guidelines are not likely to he effective in this type of industry. An individual job based interventions are strongly suggested to have a good control of CTD problems in ship building industry.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.22 no.A
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• pp.127-135
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• 2002

In this study, the preliminary risk assessment for the underground storage tanks(UST) in Chunchon city was implemented using the geographical information system(GIS). The estimation variables, such as the installation year, storage capacity, the distances from streams, and from groundwater pumping wells, were selected to estimate the relative risk levels. The weighting factors were given to all the estimation variables. Cumulative scores were induced by the combination of all the scores of the corresponding variables using the buffering technique and the overlay analysis in ArcView. Using the these process, the relative risk level of each UST was estimated. Some sites in this study are simplified and reduced because the number of useable data are limited or too enormous. Thus the selection of the comprehensive estimation variables and the proper weighting values are required for the future study. The methodology in this study could be served not only for the preliminary risk assessment of UST but also for the selection of the proper location of new and old UST. And, it can be used for the effective management system of UST.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.150-158
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• 2019

Soil contaminated with heavy metals from artisanal gold mining in Anka Local Government Area in Northwestern Nigeria was investigated to evaluate the human health risk as a result of heavy metals. Measured concentration of heavy metals and exposure parameters were used to estimate human carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risk. GIS-based Kriging method was utilized to create a prediction maps of human health risks and probability maps of heavy metals concentrations exceeding their threshold limits. Hazard index calculation showed that 21 out of 23 locations are posing non-cancer risk for children. Adults and children are at high cancer risk in all locations as the total cancer risk exceeded $1{\times}10^{-6}$ (the lower limit CTR value). Kriging model showed that only a very small area in Anka has a hazard index of less than unity and cumulative target risk of less than $1{\times}10^{-4}$, indicating a significant carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic risks for children. The probability of heavy metals to exceed their threshold concentrations around the study area was also found to be high.