• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.119-126
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• 2015

The primary purpose of the general duty clause is to offer an extra measure of protection to employees in the workplace. Most standards implemented under OSHA are targeted at a specific hazard. The general duty clause, however allows inspectors to cite employers for exposing its employees to a recognized hazard that has not been specifically addressed in the regulations. Congress intended the general duty clause to be a limited means of advancing the purposes of the OSHAct. But OSHA has not always regarded the general duty clause as the limited means for protecting the safety and health of employees that Congress intented. OSHA attempted to expand the scope of the general duty clause, at times improperly, to make it a more flexible enforcement tool. OSHA's interpretation of each of the restrictions on the scope of the clause has changed over the years. In recent years the general duty clause has been utilized as a sometimes controversial mechanism for enforcement of safety guidelines that have not yet been specifically addressed by statute or regulation. The most notable example of this was application of the general duty clause to ergonomic hazards.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.21 no.4 s.76
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• pp.119-126
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• 2006

Though safety signs are important since they transmit hazard information even after diverse accident prevention treatments, their functional effectiveness were never tested in Korea so that even those provided by Occupational Safety & Health Act(OSHAct) could not accomplish their objectives, "effective accident prevention", This research was carried out to understand confronted problems and improvement direction for safety signs provided by OSHAct. For them, current safety signs were analyzed with a semiotic view on one hand, and a questionnaire survey was conducted with safety-related people in industrial fields on the other hand. To summarize problems in semiotic aspects, geometric simplicity of pictograms in safety signs seemed to be so emphasized that they might fail to induce realistic action, and their esthetic sensation seemed to be lower than those of developed countries. And according to present questionnaire survey, it was pointed out that; 1) legal systems related with safety signs were not classified appropriately, 2) safety signs were recognized as difficult to understand and inapplicable to industrial fields, and eventually 3) safety signs were not effectively utilized for industrial accident prevention. Therefore, discussions for improving confronted problems and relation to international standards were added at the end.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.587-612
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• 2014

Objectives: There is requirement to select candidate materials for chronic inhalation/carcinogenicity testing, so we would like to set the priority of candidate materials. Methods and Results: We recommend the priorities for candidate materials based on the chemicals stipulated in the Occupational Safety and Health Act(OSHAct) and the Toxic Chemicals Control Act(TCCA) in Korea. Conclusions: We presented candidate chemicals consisting of solids(powders), gases and liquids(Such as organic solvents) with priorities.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.125-155
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• 1999

The objectives of this study were (1) an investigation of the current status of the hazardous substances, (2) a comparative analysis of classification system of hazardous substances between Korea and other countries, (3) a development of the new classification system in Korea, finally a review of prerequisites for effective enforcement of the new system. The results are summarized as follows : 1) The backbone of classification system of hazardous substances in Korea is based on Japanese classification system and EC(European Committee) guideline of hazardous substance. There are many problems in managing and handling of hazardous substances due to discordant of Japanese and EC system. It is desirable to revise the classification system to be harmonized with international guideline for example, guideline of IFCS(The Inter-governmental Forum on Chemical Safety) and EC guideline. 2) There are several problems in definitions of corrosive, sensitizing and irritation in MSDS Code of Ministry of Labour. It is desirable to reform those definitions. 3) Among the hazardous substances under the current system, there are several substances such as, beta-propiolactone, methyl bromide, ethyleneimine, etc that are not used and produced in Korea. It is desirable to exclude the substances from the list of controlled substances. 4) The section 39, about 'substance that designated to attach warning label' in Korea Occupational Safety and Health Act(OSHAct) should be eliminated, because above section is unnecessary under the MSDS system. 5) The researchers recommend to establish a new list of hazardous substance which are controlled by OSHAct. It is desirable that the new list is consist of two types. The first type is 'a list of the specially controlled substances' and the other is 'the generally controlled substances'. 6) It is recommended that the specially controlled substances should include hazardous substances that are highly toxic and widely used in Korea. And the generally controlled substances should include hazardous substances that can be analysed by instrument and carry threshold. limit values(TLV's).

• Industry Promotion Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.61-67
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• 2023

This study compared, analyzed, and verified the accident rate and accident fatality rate (per 10,000 workers) of workplaces that perform safety management on behalf of a safety management institutions designated and registered in accordance with the OSHAct and workplaces that perform safety management. According to the research results, the significance was confirmed that the group with a low accident rate was the workplaces that self-appointed safety managers, workplaces with self-appointed safety managers in size with less than 300 employees, and workplaces in the industrial accident insurance industry in the manufacturing and transportation, warehouse, and telecommunications industries. The groups with a low accidental death rate were workplaces with less than 300 employees, workplaces where safety management was performed on behalf of safety management institutions, and workplaces with selfappointment for other medical businesses. In this study, it was confirmed that the accident rate in the safety management agency's workplaces was higher than that of its own appointed workplaces, and that there were some differences in the accident fatality rate depending on the size and industry. Therefore, since the current safety management agency system cannot ensure the effect of preventing accidental deaths, there is a need for comprehensive improvement of the agency system and improvement of the system to strengthen expertise in preventing industrial accidents.