• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.100-107
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• 2015

Korea government has established and enforced countermeasures about the various policy of industrial accident prevention. Recent chemical accidents included hazardous materials. Exposure to these chemicals can cause serious environmental poisoning and various health problems. The key factor causing these major accidents may be associated with the mistake in workers' safety behaviors. Some researchers noted workers' safety behaviors may be related to workers' safety climate. In this research, a survey was conducted to explore workers' safety behaviors and safety climate in a large petrochemical company in Korea. The company processes major petrochemical materials and any spills can be hazardous and cause chemical disasters. In this study, we explored one petrochemical company to investigate three hypotheses. 593 workers were surveyed for this study. We checked association between workers' safety behavior and safety climate. The survey result shows the people who have safety climate do safe behavior.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.107-121
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• 1996

The objective of this study is to establish the application method of environmental information system which is related to hazard identification for Health Risk Assessment. For establishing the environmental information system, fourteen hazardous chemicals were chosen and applicated to the database network such as RTKNET(Right Know Net), MSDS(Material Safety Data Sheets), TRI(Toxic Release Inventory), IRIS, AIRS, etc. The searching method of environmental information is classified to three sections such as the domestic commercial information company, international database agencies, and internet. Recently the importance of environmental information is being emphasized because it is essential 10 use database system in the field of environmental studies. Most of the foreign research organizations are communicating actively for information exchange, and the improvement of the quality of research. It is required to accumulate the data and develop them to database for future research.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.39 no.11
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• pp.650-654
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• 2017

As the amount of chemicals increases, there is a global movement to reorganize the chemical management system. Korea has also reorganized its chemical management system to enact the act on Chemical Control and Registration and Evaluation etc. of chemical substance. However, it is true that there are not enough explanations in domestic workplaces. Therefore, deepening understanding of chemical control act and searched for a complementary point and future development direction. Through the proposed method, chemical control act should be widely adopted and studied both inside and outside the country as a safe chemical management system.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.595-610
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• 2003

The statistical indexes such as RMSE (Root Mean Square Error), Mean Bias error, and IOA (Index of agreement) are used to evaluate 3 Dimensional wind and temperature fields predicted by operational meteorological model RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Meteorological System) implemented in CARIS (Chemical Accident Response Information System) for the dispersion forecast of hazardous chemicals in case of the chemical accidents in Korea. The operational atmospheric model, RAMS in CARIS are designed to use GDAPS, GTS, and AWS meteorological data obtained from KMA (Korean Meteorological Administration) for the generation of 3-dimensional initial meteorological fields. The predicted meteorological variables such as wind speed, wind direction, temperature, and precipitation amount, during 19 ∼ 23, August 2002, are extracted at the nearest grid point to the meteorological monitoring sites, and validated against the observations located over the Korean peninsula. The results show that Mean bias and Root Mean Square Error are 0.9 (m/s), 1.85 (m/s) for wind speed at 10 m above the ground, respectively, and 1.45 ($^{\circ}C$), 2.82 ($^{\circ}C$) for surface temperature. Of particular interest is the distribution of forecasting error predicted by RAMS with respect to the altitude; relatively smaller error is found in the near-surface atmosphere for wind and temperature fields, while it grows larger as the altitude increases. Overall, some of the overpredictions in comparisons with the observations are detected for wind and temperature fields, whereas relatively small errors are found in the near-surface atmosphere. This discrepancies are partly attributed to the oversimplified spacing of soil, soil contents and initial temperature fields, suggesting some improvement could probably be gained if the sub-grid scale nature of moisture and temperature fields was taken into account. However, IOA values for the wind field (0.62) as well as temperature field (0.78) is greater than the 'good' value criteria (> 0.5) implied by other studies. The good value of IOA along with relatively small wind field error in the near surface atmosphere implies that, on the basis of current meteorological data for initial fields, RAMS has good potentials to be used as a operational meteorological model in predicting the urban or local scale 3-dimensional wind fields for the dispersion forecast in association with hazardous chemical releases in Korea.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.312-321
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• 2013

Objective: In May 2011, an interview with three United States Forces Korea veterans revealed that chemicals believed to be 'Agent Orange' were buried at Camp Carroll (situated in Waegwan, Chilgok-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea) in 1978. Many hazardous chemicals, such as perchloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), and organochlorines were subsequently found in a joint US-ROK environmental investigation, although dioxins or burial evidence related to 'Agent Orange' have been not uncovered. This study was carried out to investigate the relevance of hazardous chemical exposure and health effects of the residents around Camp Carroll. Methods: The authors conducted a health questionnaire survey among residents around Camp Carroll regarding Waegwan groundwater ingestion, length of residence in Waegwan, and physician-diagnosed disease history (such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes and etc.). Logistic regression was performed to identify the associations between hazardous chemical exposure and physician-diagnosed diseases. Results: Among the 5,320 residents, excluding those living outside the Waegwan area, 3,430 subjects age 30 and over were analyzed. Among females, upon correction of age, smoking history and Camp Carroll working history, a higher distribution in the Waegwan groundwater ingestion group was demonstrated for patients with physician-diagnosed cancer and hypertension. The odds ratios have a tendency to increase with increased length of Waegwan groundwater ingestion. Conclusions: This study may be limited by not adopting a cohort study for the evaluation of factors that may confound environmental exposure. Yet it is meaningful that the correlation between Waegwan groundwater ingestion and chronic diseases were found through regression analysis in female; and further, this outcome may be used as a sampling basis for a secondary epidemiologic study.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.236-241
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• 2012

There are many industrial factories in the central Nakdong river basin and have been occurred water pollution accidents by hazardous chemicals such as phenol, 1,4-dioxane and perchlorate. In this study, ten compounds of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) (dichlorvos, toluene-2,4-diisocyanate, 4,4'-methylenedianiline, 4,4'-methylenebis (2-chloroaniline), diethyl phthalate, di-n-butyl phthalate, butyl benzyl phthaltate, bis (2-ethylhexyl) adipate, benzophenone, 4,4'-bisphenol A) of hazardous chemicals which may be potentially discharged into the Nakdong river, were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with disk-type solid-phase extraction. Accuracy and precision were in the range of 75.6~110.5%, and 4.6~12.7%, respectively and recovery was in the range of 72.4~127.9%. Three compounds (bis (2-ethylhexyl)adipate, benzophenone, 4,4'-bisphenol A) were detected in industrial wastewater such as wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and wastewater discharge facilities in the Nakdong River basin.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.155-163
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• 2003

Fluoranthene, a common polycyclicaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), exhibits phototoxicity which may affect aquatic organisms. The eventual goal of this study is to develop a biomarker of Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) used in monitoring hazardous chemicals in the ecosystem. In this study we investigated neural toxicity of fluoranthene in Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) along with comparative analysis of corresponding behavioral response. The untreated individuals shooed normal behavioral characteristics (i. e., smooth and linear movements). The treated fish, however, showed stopping and abrupt change of orientation (100 ppb), and severely reduced locomotive activity and enhanced surfacing activity (1,000 ppb). Treatment of the medaka fish with fluoranthene caused a significant suppresson of acetycholine esterase (AChE) activities in the body portion but not in the head portion. When fish were exposed to 1,000 ppb of fluoranthene for 24 hr, the body AChE activities decreased from 126.${\pm}$31.89 (nmoles substrate hydrolyzed per min per mg protein) to 49.51${\pm}$11.99. Expressions of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) protein in the different organs from both head and body portions were comparatively analyzed using an immunohistochemical technique. Five organs of the medaka fish showing a strong TH protein expression were the olfactory bulb, hypothalamus, optic lobe, pons and myelencephalon regions. This study provides molecular and neurobehavioral bases of a biomonitoring system for toxic chemicals using fish as a model organism.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.217-222
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• 1999

Changes in certain fish behaviors are known to be very sensitive indicators of sublethal exposure to environmental contaminants. Therefore, behavioral toxicity tests, if properly designed, can be very useful to assess the influence of hazardous chemicals on fish. However, quantitative analysis of xenobiotic-mediated changes in locomotor behavior in fishes are rare, due mainly to the methodological difficulties. In general, fish movement has been known to be hypertrophic or hypotrophic according to the chemicals. As a study of fish behavioral toxicities, we qualified the swimming movement of Oryzias latipes using computer-automated video tracking system. Oryzias latipes was exposed to cadmium of 128 mg/L for 1 hour in a limited aquaria, then the total swimming distance, the average swimming velocity, the histogram of turning angles, and the turning frequency were analyzed. Fish treated with cadmium showed decreased swimming activities, decreased velocity, and decreased turning frequency, which means hypotrophic activity. From these results, the computer-automated video tracking system of this study seems to be a good tool for the evaluation of the potential ecotoxicological studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.51-59
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• 2018

It is difficult to determine the outdoor toxic level of hazardous chemicals that are leaked in the building, since there are no efficient ways to calculate how much percentage of the leaked chemicals is released into the outdoor atmosphere. In address to these problems, we propose a reasonable box model that can quantitatively evaluate the mass rate of the indoor chlorine leakage into the outside of the building. The proposed method assumes that the indoor chlorine leakage is fully mixed with the indoor air, and then the mixture of the chlorine and indoor air is exfiltrated into the outside of the building through effective leakage areas of the building. It is found that the exfiltration rate of the mixture of the chlorine and indoor air is strongly dependent on the temperature difference between inside and outside the building than the atmospheric wind speed. As compared with a conventional method that uses a vague mitigation factor, our method is more effective to evaluate the outdoor toxic threat zone of the chlorine that are leaked in the building, because it can consider the degree of airtight of the building in the evaluation of the threat zone.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.12 no.3_4
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• pp.43-54
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• 1997

Species, doses and routes extrapolation can be sucessfully carried out by using a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) approach. And PBPK approach to assess risk of hazardous chemicals is reasonable whatever the exposure scenarios are happened. Both partitioning coefficients of chemical between tissue and blood and enzymatic metabolic rate constants are key parameters to build up the PBPK model. In this study, we tried to estimate in vitro metabolic rate constants using a special apparatus instead to measure the in vivo constants which are used to PBPK simulation since the in vitro tests are less expensive and more convenient than in vivo tests. For the purpose, we designed and tested the new system to measure continuously the headspace concentration of VOC. The newly designed system is composed with a diffusion chamber which generates gaseous substrate, a reaction vessel with a recirculating pump to establish a closed system, an autbmatic sampler from a gas phase, a gas chromatography to analyze the headspace. In addition, a cold water condenser is attached between the reaction vessel and pump to reduce the content of gaseous moisture which interferes with chemical analysis. To validate the newly developed methodology, in vitro metabolic rate constants of trichloroethylene (TCE) as a prototype VOC were estimated by simulating observed results with an ACSL program. The simulated results are consistent to those estimated by the other research groups. This finding suggests that our newly designed closed system may be a useful apparatus to estimate in vitro metabolic rate constants for VOC.