• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.155-165
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• 2021

Objectives: Acute exposure to high concentrations of chemicals can occur when a chemical accident takes place. As such exposure can cause ongoing environmental pollution, such as in the soil and groundwater, there is a need for a tool that can assess health effects in the long term. The purpose of this study was assessing the health risks of residents living near a chemical accident site due to long-term exposure while considering the temporal concentration changes of the toxic chemicals leaked during the accident until their extinction in the environment using a multimedia environmental dynamics model. Methods: A health risk assessment was conducted on three cases of formaldehyde chemical accidents. In this study, health risk assessment was performed using a multimedia environmental dynamics model that considers the behavior of the atmosphere, soil, and water. In addition, the extinction period of formaldehyde in the environment was regarded as extinction in the environment when the concentration in the air and soil fell below the background concentration prior to the accident. The subjects of health risk assessment were classified into four groups according to age: 0-9 years old, 10-18 years old, 19-64 years old, and over 65 years old. Carcinogenic risk assessment by respiratory exposure and non-carcinogenic risk assessment by soil intake were conducted as well. Results: In the assessment of carcinogenic risk due to respiratory exposure, the excess carcinogenic risk did not exceed 1.0×10-6 in all three chemical accidents, so there was no health effect due to the formaldehyde chemical accident. As a result of the evaluation of non-carcinogenic risk due to soil intake, none of the three chemical accidents had a risk index of 1, so there was no health effect. For all three chemical accidents, the excess cancer risk and hazard index were the highest in the age group 0-9. Next, 10-18 years old, 65 years old or older, and 19-64 years old showed the highest risk. Conclusion: This study considers environmental changes after a chemical accident occurs and until the substance disappears from the environment. It also conducts a health risk assessment by reflecting the characteristics of the long-term persistence and concentration change over time. It is thought that it is of significance as a health risk assessment study reflecting the exposure characteristics of the accident substance for an actual chemical accident.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.482-503
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• 2019

Introduction: A new third version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III) has been developed in response to trends in working life, theoretical concepts, and international experience. A key component of the COPSOQ III is a defined set of mandatory core items to be included in national short, middle, and long versions of the questionnaire. The aim of the present article is to present and test the reliability of the new international middle version of the COPSOQ III. Methods: The questionnaire was tested among 23,361 employees during 2016-2017 in Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Turkey. A total of 26 dimensions (measured through scales or single items) of the middle version and two from the long version were tested. Psychometric properties of the dimensions were assessed regarding reliability (Cronbach α), ceiling and floor effects (fractions with extreme answers), and distinctiveness (correlations with other dimensions). Results: Most international middle dimensions had satisfactory reliability in most countries, though some ceiling and floor effects were present. Dimensions with missing values were rare. Most dimensions had low to medium intercorrelations. Conclusions: The COPSOQ III offers reliable and distinct measures of a wide range of psychosocial dimensions of modern working life in different countries; although a few measures could be improved. Future testing should focus on validation of the COPSOQ items and dimensions using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Such investigations would enhance the basis for recommendations using the COPSOQ III.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.5 no.2_3_4
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• pp.89-100
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• 2002

Accidental gaseous losses from industrial processes can pose considerable health and environmental risks but assessing their health, safety and environmental impact is problematic. Improved understanding and simulation of the dispersion of emissions in the vicinity of storage tanks is required. The present study aims to assess the capability of the turbulence closures and meshing alternatives in a commercially available CFD code for predicting dispersion in the vicinity of cubes and circular cylindrical storage tanks. The performance of the $k-{\varepsilon}$ and Reynolds Stress turbulence models and meshing alternatives for these cases are compared to experimental data. The CFD simulations are very good qualitatively and, in many cases, quantitatively. A mesh with prismatic elements is more accurate than a tetrahedral mesh. Overall the Reynolds stress model performs slightly better than the $k-{\varepsilon}$ model.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.173-191
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• 2009

Civil infrastructures are always subjected to various types of hazard and deterioration. These conditions require systematic efforts to assess the exposure and vulnerability of infrastructure, as well as producing strategic countermeasures to reduce the risks. This paper describes the needs for and concept of advanced sensor technologies for risk assessment of civil infrastructure in Japan. Backgrounds of the infrastructure problems such as natural disasters, difficult environment, limited resource for maintenance, and increasing requirement for safety are discussed. The paper presents a concept of risk assessment, which is defined as a combination of hazard and structural vulnerability assessment. An overview of current practices and research activities toward implementing the concept is presented. This includes implementation of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for environment and natural disaster prevention, improvement of stock management, and prevention of structural failure.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.136-136
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• 2017

In agriculture, the rice is the one of important things. Many farmers and scientists have long tried to increase the yield of rice. So many technologies have been developed these days. One type of technology has given rise to a host of concerns and questions, namely Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The increasing cultivation of GM crops has raised a wide range of concerns with respect to food safety, environmental effects and socio-economic issues and now commercially planted on about 100 million hectares in some 22 developed and developing countries. The scientific evidence concerning the environmental and health impacts of GMOs is still emerging, but so far there is no conclusive information on the definitive negative impacts of GMOs on health or the environment. Nevertheless, public perceptions about GMOs in food and agriculture are divided with a tendency toward avoiding GM food and products in many developed and developing countries. Also Korea is one of that country and is not allow the GMOs now. So I studied whether these GMOs are actually dangerous for environment and whether there are differences in cultivar characteristics such as germination test with TTC tetrazolium, germination test in frozen soil and gene-flow test with glufosinate and strip-bar test. With these experiments, we evaluated the agricultural safety of GM rice and to identify and assess environmental risks.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.249-256
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• 2020

Historical construction health and safety (H&S) challenges, in terms of a range of resources and issues, continue to be experienced, namely design process-related hazards are encountered on site, workers are unaware of the hazards and risks related to the construction process and its activities, activities are commenced on site without adequate hazard identification and risk assessments (HIRAs), difficulty is experienced in terms of real time monitoring of construction-related activities, workers handle heavy materials, plant, and equipment, and ultimately the experience of injuries. Given the abovementioned, and the advent of Industry 4.0, a quantitative study, which entailed the completion of a self-administered questionnaire online, was conducted among registered professional (Pr) and candidate Construction H&S Agents, to determine the potential of Industry 4.0 to contribute to resolving the challenges cited. The findings indicate that Industry 4.0 technologies such as augmented reality (AR), drone technology, virtual reality (VR), VR based H&S training, and wearable technology /sensors have the potential to resolve the cited H&S challenges as experienced in construction. Conclusions include that Industry 4.0 technologies can finally address the persistent H&S challenges experienced in construction. Recommendations include: employer associations, professional associations, and statutory councils should raise the level of awareness relative to the potential implementation of Industry 4.0 relative to H&S in construction; case studies should be documented and shared; tertiary construction management education programmes should integrate Industry 4.0 into all possible modules, especially H&S-related modules, and continuing professional development (CPD) H&S should address Industry 4.0.

• Women's Health Nursing
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.124-131
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• 2006

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions regarding the use of Emergency Contraceptive Pills (ECPs) among young Korean women. Method: The study included 14 unmarried women aged 19 to 34 years (mean, 25 years). Data was collected by focus group interviews and an in-depth interview from July to November, 2005. Content analysis was conducted. Result: The four major themes that emerged were control of accessibility, safety concern, lack of knowledge and information, and ambivalence. Control of accessibility: Most of the participants stated a prescription is necessary although they might feel ashamed if they had to ask for an ECP. Safety concerns: Participants thought that taking an ECP would be harmful to their body. Lack of knowledge and information: Most of the participants felt that they did not know enough about ECPs and were willing to learn more. Ambivalence: The participants stated that they would take an ECP when needed and would recommend it to a friend although they were concerned about the risks of ECPs. Conclusion: The results from this study suggest the need for an educational and awareness program to empower women to be able to make informed decisions on ECPs when needed.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.87-95
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• 2020

Generally, occupational safety and particularly construction safety is an intricate phenomenon. Industry professionals have devoted vital attention to enforcing Occupational Safety and Health (OHS) from the last three decades to enhance safety management in construction. Despite the efforts of the safety professionals and government agencies, current safety management still relies on manual inspections which are infrequent, time-consuming and prone to error. Extensive research has been carried out to deal with high fatality rates confronting by the construction industry. Sensor systems, visualization-based technologies, and tracking techniques have been deployed by researchers in the last decade. Recently in the construction industry, computer vision has attracted significant attention worldwide. However, the literature revealed the narrow scope of the computer vision technology for safety management, hence, broad scope research for safety monitoring is desired to attain a complete automatic job site monitoring. With this regard, the development of a broader scope computer vision-based risk recognition system for correlation detection between the construction entities is inevitable. For this purpose, a detailed analysis has been conducted and related rules which depict the correlations (positive and negative) between the construction entities were extracted. Deep learning supported Mask R-CNN algorithm is applied to train the model. As proof of concept, a prototype is developed based on real scenarios. The proposed approach is expected to enhance the effectiveness of safety inspection and reduce the encountered burden on safety managers. It is anticipated that this approach may enable a reduction in injuries and fatalities by implementing the exact relevant safety rules and will contribute to enhance the overall safety management and monitoring performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.14-20
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• 2008

A large number of accidents have been occurred in the domestic shipbuilding industry. Its number of accidents is approximately twice than that of manufacturing industry and three times larger than that of whole industry in general. There are several reasons that make it hard to control the accidents. First, it is because the shipbuilding industry is composed of many subcontractors who may need improvement in safety education and safety management. Second, the shipyard environments are exposed to lots of hazards such as high elevation works, isolated workspaces, heavyweight and huge structures/components. Last, the shipbuilding industry has grown too rapidly in a short period. For that reason, the safety management standards and safety consciousness could not catch up the speed of its development. In this study, it is suggested to use a more efficient and easier way to conduct safety management using a web-based safety management system for the shipbuilding industry. This system is composed of four main parts, which is available for self-auditing with legal support. Those are checklists based safety and health evaluation, safety inspection, user shared accident database and user shared bulletin board. It is expected that this system can help us to reduce risks in the shipbuilding industry considerably.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.604-609
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to check the priority control status of the current operation process alarm by comparing the priority of the alarm set up in PV high trip point, which is being installed and operated in the domestic petrochemical industry, with the criteria presented in ISA 18.2 International Standard or EEMUA 191 Guidelines. In the event of a process problem, excessively set high alarm is provided to the driver in a short period of time, making it difficult to identify the alarm that needs to be handled first. As a result, it is likely that the operator will not be able to carry out appropriate actions within the specified time frame, and many cases have been reported leading to unexpected process shutdowns or process accidents. Therefore, this study aims to introduce international standards related to alarm management and identify the level of alarm control used at the domestic petrochemical industry site to inform potential risks that may occur in the petrochemical process of the national industrial complex in the future and suggest ways to reduce risk factors. This paper was submitted to Professor Lee Inbeom's retirement anniversary issue.