• Title/Summary/Keyword: Hazardous Index

Search Result 105, Processing Time 0.022 seconds

Associations of Dietary Calcium Intake and Serum Calcium Level with Blood Lead Levels in Korean Male Lead Workers

  • Kim, Hee-Seon;Song, Ok-Young;Kim, Kyung-Min;Lee, Sung-Soo;Young Hwangbo;Ahn, Kyu-Dong;Lee, Byung-Kook
    • Journal of Community Nutrition
    • /
    • v.3 no.2
    • /
    • pp.96-102
    • /
    • 2001
  • A cross-sectional study was performed to estimate the nutritional status of Korean male lead workers and to assess the relationship between calcium nutritional status and blood lead levels. A flood consumption survey was conducted by the 24-hr recall method with 118 lead workers and 63 non-lead exposed controls. Blood lead levels were analyzed from whole blood and serum calcium concentrations were also assessed. Results of dietary analysis showed Korean lead workers consumed relatively sufficient nutrients (more than 75% of RDA) except, calcium. Mean dietary calcium intake of lead workers was 502.2mg(72% of RDA) while that of the non-lead workers was estimated as 600.8mg(86% of RDA). Intakes of protein, iron, niacin and vitamin C of lead workers were significantly lower than those of non-lead workers. There was a wide range of blood lead levels(5.5 to 73.5$\mu\textrm{g}$/㎗) observed while mean blood lead level of lead workers was 30.9$\mu\textrm{g}$/㎗. However, 98% of lead workers showed normal serum ca1cium concentrations (range ; 8.9 to 10.7mg/㎗, mean ; 9.77mg/㎗) while 66% of lead workers were estimated to intake a dietary calcium lower than 75% of RDA. Mean blood lead levels of non-1ead workers were significantly lower(mean ; 5.1$\mu\textrm{g}$/㎗, p < 0.001) and the serum calcium concentration was significantly higher(mean ; 10.20mg/㎗, p < 0.001) than lead workers. Results of unadjusted correlation showed that serum calcium level and dietary calcium intake were negatively correlated with blood lead concentration. In a multiple regression of blood lead levels with variables known as affecting blood lead 1eve1 such as age, body mass index and occupational lead exposure, serum calcium was insignificant while dietary calcium intake showed statistically significant(p < 0.05) relation. Since calcium is a very important nutrient to reduce hazardous effects of lead, it should be strongly recommended that lead workers need to increase dietary calcium intake.

  • PDF

Evaluation on Feasibility of Industrial By-products for Development of Mono-Layer Landfill Cover System (산업부산물을 이용한 단층형 매립지 복토시스템 개발을 위한 적용 타당성 평가)

  • Kim, Soon-Oh;Kim, Pil-Joo;Yu, Chan
    • Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
    • /
    • v.30 no.11
    • /
    • pp.1075-1086
    • /
    • 2008
  • In order to investigate the applicability and suitability of the industrial by-products to apply mono-layer cover system for non-sanitary landfill sites, 6 different industrial by-products, such as construction waste, bottom ash, gypsum, blast furnace and steel manufacture slags, and stone powder sludge, were evaluated. Various physicochemical and hydrodynamic properties of the industrial byproducts were investigated. The environmental safety was monitored using batch and long-term leaching tests as well. In addition, the flexibility of plants was observed by cultivating them in the industrial by-products. The results for physicochemical properties indicate that most of the materials considered appeared to be suitable for landfill cover. Particularly, the concentration levels of hazardous elements regulated by the Korean Law for Waste Management did not exceed the regulatory limits in all target materials. In addition, the concentrations of regulated elements for the Korean Soil Conservation Law were examined below the regulatory limits in most of materials considered, except for the stone powder sludge. The results of batch and long-term experiments showed bottom ash and construction waste were the most suitable materials for landfill cover among the industrial by-products considered. The results of plant studies indicate that the bottom ash among industrial by-products considered was most effective in developing vegetation on landfill site, showing fast germination and large growth index. At the final covering system made of mixture of soil and bottom ash, the optimum application rate of farmyard manure was observed to be 40-50 Mg/ha.

Analysis of Hydrological Surface Characteristics using ArcView/Spatial Analyst GIS Extension (ArcView/spatial Analyst GIS 확장 프로그램을 이용한 수리지형 특성인자 분석)

  • Lee, Ki-Won
    • Journal of the Korean earth science society
    • /
    • v.22 no.6
    • /
    • pp.491-499
    • /
    • 2001
  • Generally, several hydrological characteristics which can be obtained from geographic processing in GIS S/W would be utilized to actual hydrological applications such as landslide stability or drainage analysis. Furthermore, by using practical GIS extension programs, it can be possible that automatic extraction task of those information, which was time-consuming and complex processing, is performed as systematical and automatic processing. In this study, using ArcView GIS S/W and its extensions concerning hydrological processing, some waterflow and surface factors in the area of Yemi sheet scaled 1:50,000 were extracted. Then, assessment of landslide stability, determined by DEM-based variables were carried out in order to investigate practical applicability of extension programs. It is thought that several hydrological factors extracted by this study were significant information to predict field model or hydrological hazardous events. It also reveals that landslide potential is overall stable with stability index mapping and S-A plot, with theoretical basis. This methodology can be applicable to other areas related to hydrological characteristics with measurements in fields.

  • PDF

Subhective Symptoms and Work-related Health Risk Factors in Korean Dental Laboratory Technicians (우리 나라 치과 기공사의 신체 자각 증상과 직업 관련 건강 위험 요인)

  • Kim, Woong-Chul;Lee, Se-Hoon
    • Journal of Technologic Dentistry
    • /
    • v.22 no.1
    • /
    • pp.89-112
    • /
    • 2000
  • Although dental laboratory technicians are prone to be exposed to various work-related health hazardous materials such as dusts, chemicals, etc., the prevalence and nature of work-related health problems of them have not been a matter of great concern in the field of occupational health service in Korea. The purpose of the present investigation was to describe a collected profile of subjective health symptoms and their attributable factors in Korean dental laboratory technicians. A questionnaire listing five groups of health symptoms and five health symptom-related factors was mailed to randomly selected 1,900 dental laboratory technicians. Among them, 1,344 dental laboratory technicians filled out the questionnaires and returnde them. Five groups of health symptoms included musculoskeletal symptom, dermal symptoms, respiratory symptoms, eys symptoms, and ear symptoms. Five health symptom-related factors were occupational environment-related health risk factors, work history, health related habits and status, use of personal protective equipment and general characteristics. Detailed parameters of health risk factors were work posture, vibration, and chemical or physical hazards such as dust, fume, vapor, solvent, light, and noise for occupational environment-related factors; work place, area, number of employees, work hours, career, work part, and work load for work history; Broca's index, hours of sleep, eating, smoking, alcohol, exercise, health examination, and self assessed health status for health habits and status; face masks, goggles, and so on for use of personal protective equipment, and; age, sex, marital status, and education for general characteristics. Before the start of main survey, a pilot survey was carried out for validity and reliability tests of the questionnaire. All the data obtained were coded and analyzed with PC/SAS 6.12 program. The prevalence of health symptoms was the highest in musculoskelton (87.3%), and followde by eyes (78.9%), respiratory organs (64.3%), ears (57.8%), and skin (52.2%) in descending order. Statistically significant risk factors by multiple logistic regression analyses were sex, health examination, self assessed health status, and hand/finger posture in musculoskeletal symptoms; sex, self assessed health status, career, acid gas, and hand contact with resin mixture in deraml symptoms; Broka's smoking, exercise, self assessed health status, and face mask in respiratory symptoms; sex, hours of sleep, self assessed health status, work hours, work load, plaster dust, inadequate lighting, and goggle in eys symptoms, and eating, smoking, self assessed health status, and work load in ear symptoms. With the above considerations in mind, prevalence of subjective symptoms among Korean dental laboratory technicians was relatively high, and they were attributable to most of the occupational environment-related factors, work history, use of personal protective equipment, health habits and status, and general characteristics. Particularly, it is suggested that health promotion programs for promoting self- assessed health status and smoking cessation, preventive measures for protection of the female technicians’health, and reducing work load be necessary, since those factors were associated with more than one subjective symptom.

  • PDF

Health Practices of University Students (일부 대학생들의 건강관련행위)

  • 이원재;반덕진
    • Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
    • /
    • v.16 no.2
    • /
    • pp.157-171
    • /
    • 1999
  • This paper analyzed health practices of students in an university in Chollabukdo Province. It attempted to study how many university students had what kinds of health practices. Furthermore, it tried to find out what are the major problems in health practice among university students. To study health practices of university students, this study sampled 1,469 students randomly. Many of the students had poor practices of teeth care. In tooth-brushing, many students (35.8%) brushed their teeth before breakfast in the morning. Most of the students (95% or more) visit dental clinic only when they had problem(s) in their teeth. For weights, there exists a great gap between perception and BMI (Body Mass Index), especially among female students. Among the female students who perceived their weights were above average, 96.4% of them were normal according to BMI. Many of the students were drinking greater amount of alcohol than safe amount suggested by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. The proportion of the students drinking harmful or hazardous amount of alcohol were 79.5% of the male students and 74.9% of the female students. It suggests that health promotion fund or tax need to be levied on alcohol to frustrate unhealthful drinking. More than half (59.0%) of the male students and about 6.0% of the female students were smoking cigarettes. The smoking initiation ages were 17.8 for male and 18.2 for female students. It means that many of the students started smoking in their junior high or high schools. It implies that smoking prevention and smoking cessation programs need to be emphasized in these schools. For perception on sex, 27.8% of the male students and 60.9% of the female students thought to keep their virginity before their marriage. The female students were more conservative in perception on sex. The average number of sexual intercourses per year of male students was 17.0 times with their lovers, 7.9 times with prostitutes, and 7.0 times with maids. The female students had sexual intercourses 5.0 times with their lovers and 4.0 times with waiters per year. The proportion of students who had experience of sexual intercourse with homosexual partners was 1.0%. The finding this study was that the university students were vulnerable to poor health practices. It is suggested that public health intervention program be provided for university students to keep them in good healthy lifestyle.

  • PDF

AHP-based Decision Model for Safety Improvement Projects for Hazardous Section of Urban Roadways (AHP 의사결정 기법을 통한 도시부 위험도로 구조개선 사업의 교통사고 저감대책 선호도 분석 -부산광역시를 중심으로-)

  • Um, Jung-An;Lee, Si-Bok;Lim, Chang-Sik
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
    • /
    • v.32 no.2D
    • /
    • pp.111-119
    • /
    • 2012
  • In this study, the effect of safety improvement project was analyzed, and a decision making model for traffic accident reduction measures was suggested. The results of this study are as follow; First the overall number of traffic accidents and casualties were reduced, especially reduced the number of unauthorized crossing and centerline encroachments was remarkable. Second, the priorities of traffic accident reduction measures. through hazards roadway section improvement projects were determined. As, higher level evaluation items of AHP hierachy structure include civil facilities and transportation facilities. The civil facilities has 6 lower level evaluation items and transportation facilities has 4 items. The results of this study, It was revealed that traffic experts prefer civil facilities more than transportation facilities and the top 2 items of the each data (or index) took over 50%. In addition, one of the last evaluation contents through the verification, the top 3 items of civil facilities took 55.38%. The project according to the improvement projects for hazards roadway reduced traffic accidents and casualties as well as saving the cost. So these results should be available for basic information for the countermeasure about reducing the traffic accidents by local governments.

The Risk of Fracture with Taking Alpha Blockers for Treating Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (양성전립선비대증 증상 조절을 위해 투여되는 알파차단제의 골절위헙)

  • Lee, Joong-Yub;Choi, Nam-Kyoung;Jung, Sun-Young;Kim, Ye-Jee;Seong, Jong-Mi;Oh, Seung-June;Park, Byung-Joo
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
    • /
    • v.42 no.3
    • /
    • pp.165-170
    • /
    • 2009
  • Objectives : We evaluated the risk of fracture associated with hypotension-related adverse drug reaction caused by taking alpha blockers to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Methods : We used the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service database from January 1st 2005 to June 30th 2006 for this study. The male patients with BPH and who had a prescription for alpha blockers following any fractures were defined as the cases. We set the 20 day long hazard period prior to the index date and the four control periods whose lengths were same with hazard period. After 1:4 matching of the hazard and control periods, conditional logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratios for the risk of fractures as related to the alpha blocker exposure. Results : Doxazosin and tamsulosin showed the increased risk of fractures, whereas terazosin did not. After stratification using the defined daily doses, a protective effect was shown for the patients who took terazosin at the doses lower than 0.4 DDD and the hazardous effect at the doses higher than or equal to 0.4 DDD. There was no significant difference for the risk of patients taking tamsulosin at the doses higher than 1.0 DDD but there was a statistically significant increase in the risk at the doses higher than or equal to 1.0 DDD. Conclusions : Alpha blockers for BPH may increase the risk of fracture in elderly patients who have comorbidities and take the concomitant medications. Alpha blockers need to be prescribed with caution, although some have high prostate specificity.

Exposure Characteristics of Construction Painters to Organic Solvents

  • Park, Hyunhee;Park, Hae Dong;Jang, Jae-Kil
    • Safety and Health at Work
    • /
    • v.7 no.1
    • /
    • pp.63-71
    • /
    • 2016
  • Background: Construction painters have not been studied well in terms of their hazards exposure. The objective of this study was to evaluate the exposure levels of total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) for painters in the construction industry. Methods: Activity-specific personal air samplings were carried out in three waterproofing activities [polyurethane (PU), asphalt, and cement mortar] and three painting activities (epoxy, oil based, and water based) by using organic-vapor-monitor passive-sampling devices. Gas chromatograph with flame ionization detector could be used for identifying and quantifying individual organic chemicals. The levels of TVOCs, by summing up 15 targeted substances, were expressed in exposure-index (EI) values. Results: As arithmetic means in the order of concentration levels, the EIs of TVOCs in waterproofing works were 10.77, 2.42, 1.78, 1.68, 0.47, 0.07, and none detected (ND) for indoor PU-primer task, outdoor PU-primer task, outdoor PU-resin task, indoor PU-resin task, asphalt-primer task, asphalt-adhesive task, and cement-mortar task, respectively. The highest EI for painting works was 5.61 for indoor epoxyprimer task, followed by indoor epoxy-resin task (2.03), outdoor oil-based-spray-paint task (1.65), outdoor water-based-paint task (0.66), and indoor oil-based-paint task (0.15). Assuming that the operations were carried out continuously for 8 hours without breaks and by using the arithmetic means of EIs for each of the 12 tasks in this study, 58.3% (7 out of 12) exceeded the exposure limit of 100% (EI > 1.0), while 8.3% (1 out of 12) was in 50e100% of exposure limit (0.5 > EI > 1.0), and 4 tasks out of 12 were located in less than 50% of the limit range (EI < 0.5). Conclusion: From this study, we recognized that construction painters are exposed to various solvents, including carcinogens and reproductive toxins, and the levels of TVOC concentration in many of the painting tasks exceeded the exposure limits. Construction workers need to be protected from chemical agents during their painting works by using personal protective devices and/or work practice measures. Additional studies should focus on the exposure assessment of other hazards for construction workers, in order to identify high-risk tasks and to improve hazardous work environments.

Disaster risk predicted by the Topographic Position and Landforms Analysis of Mountainous Watersheds (산지유역의 지형위치 및 지형분석을 통한 재해 위험도 예측)

  • Oh, Chae-Yeon;Jun, Kye-Won
    • Journal of Korean Society of Disaster and Security
    • /
    • v.11 no.2
    • /
    • pp.1-8
    • /
    • 2018
  • Extreme climate phenomena are occurring around the world caused by global climate change. The heavy rains exceeds the previous record of highest rainfall. In particular, as flash floods generate heavy rainfall on the mountains over a relatively a short period of time, the likelihood of landslides increases. Gangwon region is especially suffered by landslide damages, because the most of the part is mountainous, steep, and having shallow soil. Therefore, in this study, is to predict the risk of disasters by applying topographic classification techniques and landslide risk prediction techniques to mountain watersheds. Classify the hazardous area by calculating the topographic position index (TPI) as a topographic classification technique. The SINMAP method, one of the earth rock predictors, was used to predict possible areas of a landslide. Using the SINMAP method, we predicted the area where the mountainous disaster can occur. As a result, the topographic classification technique classified more than 63% of the total watershed into open slope and upper slope. In the SINMAP analysis, about 58% of the total watershed was analyzed as a hazard area. Due to recent developments, measures to reduce mountain disasters are urgently needed. Stability measures should be established for hazard zone.

A Study on Indoor Environment Safety Level Certification of Educational Facilities and School Safety Level Evaluation (교육시설 안전 등급 인증과 학교 안전도 심사에 대한 연구)

  • Myoung-Kwan Kim;Young-Guk Kwon
    • Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
    • /
    • v.25 no.2
    • /
    • pp.17-28
    • /
    • 2023
  • This study aimed to verify the validity of the evaluation items and weight determination of the indoor environmental safety area, which has the most frequent accidents, among the safety certification evaluations of educational facilities by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea, which has been conducted since May 2021. As a preceding study, the evaluation items of the school safety evaluation checklist being implemented in the US state of Vermont were compared, and the causes of accidents judged by teachers in the accident experiences written by 200 Korean teachers were compared with the safety certification evaluation items belonged to the Ministry of Education. In addition, research literature using the AHP analysis technique on safety risks of elementary and secondary schools in China and safety evaluation index study cases of 539 elementary school children in Indonesia were analyzed. Through these preceding studies, measures to add and adjust evaluation items were derived and the validity and importance rankings of evaluation items were calculated through AHP questionnaires to teachers and safety experts. In addition, a survey was conducted on 104 ordinary people to verify the results of expert analysis. As a result of expert AHP analysis, 'safety education and disaster response training (.396)' was the highest priority for the relative importance of the first layer, followed by 'safety measures (.387)' and 'building materials'. Safety (.216)' was found to be the highest priority. In the overall importance ranking of the 13 second-tier screening items, safety accident prevention education had the highest priority and disaster preparedness training ranked second, proving that the Ministry of Education's review weight was underestimated. In addition, slip and collision accident countermeasures, which were not in the existing Ministry of Education review items, ranked 4th, laboratory practice room safety measures ranked 6th, and sanitation, cleanliness, hazardous substance management, and cafeteria/cooking room safety measures ranked 9th, indicating a significant level of importance. Referring to the importance ranking, which is the result of this study, it is suggested that it is necessary to review the weight of each review item again.