• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.315-317
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• 2017

We present the case of a 45-year-old man with a history of benzene exposure who developed splenic marginal zone lymphoma. For 6 years, he had worked in an enclosed space cleaning instruments with benzene. He was diagnosed with splenic marginal zone lymphoma 19 years after retirement. During his time of working in the laboratory in the 1980s, working environments were not monitored for hazardous materials. We indirectly estimated the cumulative level of past benzene exposure using job-exposure matrices and technical assumptions. Care must be taken in investigating the relevance of occupational benzene exposure in the occurrence of indolent B-cell lymphoma. Because of the long latency period and because occupational measurement data do not exist for the period during the patient's exposure, the epidemiological impact of benzene exposure may be underestimated.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.518-526
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• 2010

There are millions of deaths from cancer worldwide every year. Among them, 4~10% are considered to be attributable to occupational factors and 0.6 million workers die annually from work-related cancers. Occupational cancers are relatively preventable compared with the cancers associated with other factors. In the developed countries, especially in Europe, there have been hundreds of occupational cancers reported annually in the respective nation-states. However, there were only 35 cases reported in Korea in the 1990s which were accepted as being work-related cancers. This difference might be related to a low level of recognition, detection, and acceptance of occupational cancer and carcinogens in Korea. To prevent the risk of exposure to carcinogens a comprehensive list of carcinogens must be prepared. This should be followed by timely dissemination of information which will enable fundamental controls to be implemented, such as the imposition of ban, substitution, and engineering controls. This will require setting up procedures to record the past use and exposure data and carrying out robust statistical analyses of that data on occupational cancers and carcinogens.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.103-112
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• 2014

Objectives: The present system of occupational safety and health law gives priority to traditional command and control regulations. However, this may give rise to problems such as the delay of standard-setting and shortages of human resources. The aim of this study is to examine the usability of private standards in occupational safety and health systems. Materials: After the limits of occupational safety and health law were examined, an application plan for private norms (EN, as enforced in the EU) and occupational safety and health management systems (OSHMS) was investigated. Results: The utilization of private norms and OSHMS may address the limits of the current legal system. In particular, OSHMS is known internationally as a measure for achieving improvements in overall occupational safety and health performance. As a result, occupational safety and health law and private norms/OSHMS are complementary to one another. Conclusions: Even though the utilization of private standards may give rise to legal questions, such standards as complementary measures to traditional command and control regulations need to be utilized progressively in occupational safety and health systems.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.172-184
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• 2011

Purpose: The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of occupational accidents by work type among municipal sanitation workers. Methods: The original data of occupational accidents in 2009 by Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency were analyzed by frequency and percentage using the SAS Version 9.1. Results: The types of occupational accident were as follows: slips and trips, falls, musculoskeletal disorders, traffic accident, collision, amputation, cut & puncture, crush injuries, strenuous movement and drop/fly. Slips and trips occurred most frequently in domestic waste collection and street sweeping. The traffic accident showed the highest incidence in food waste collection. Falls occurred most frequently in recycling waste collection. Musculoskeletal disorders showed the highest incidence in large waste collection. Conclusion: Depending on the work type, types of occupational accident were different. The results of this study can provide the information for the development of the occupational accident prevention programs of municipal sanitation workers.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.405-422
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• 2010

Occupational musculoskeletal disorders currently account for the largest proportion of the occupational illnesses in Korea. In this research, status of musculoskeletal disorders among the occupational illnesses was examined through workers' compensation claims data. Types and characteristics of musculoskeletal disorders were looked at other data set as well. The data sets included epidemiological investigation data reported by Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, and data collected from occupational disease surveillance reports and Korean occupational health-related scientific journals. Number of cases, incidence rate and insurance benefits for occupational musculoskeletal disorders in Korea are increasing every year. In addition, musculoskeletal disorders occurrence is shifted from large enterprises group to small-and-medium group, from manufacturing to service sector, and from production workers to office and professional workers. Although low back pain is still most common, its occurrence characteristics is gradually shifted from traumatic to cumulative while musculoskeletal disorders are somewhat seemingly moved from lumbar to upper limb body part. Musculoskeletal disorders were observed to be more diverse and prevalent in epidemiological investigations or surveillance data rather in workers' compensation claims data. Musculoskeletal disorders occurrence is related to demographic factors, occupational psychosocial factors, and ergonomic risk factors at workplace for which appropriate preventive measures needed to be made accordingly.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.258-262
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• 2006

• 대한예방의학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.10b
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• pp.212-214
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• 1997

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.52-57
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• 2012

Objectives: Lifting heavy weights involves the Valsalva manoeuvre, which leads to intraocular pressure spikes. We used data from a case-control study to further investigate the hypothesis that occupational lifting is a risk factor for retinal detachment. Methods: The study population included 48 cases (patients operated for retinal detachment) and 84 controls (outpatients attending an eye clinic). The odds ratios (OR) of idiopathic retinal detachment were estimated with a logistic regression model (adjusted for age, sex and body mass index). Three indexes were used to examine exposure to lifting; 1) maximum load lifted, 2) average weekly lifting, 3) lifelong cumulative lifting. Results: For all indexes, the most exposed subjects showed an increased risk of retinal detachment compared with the unexposed (index 1: OR 3.57, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.21-10.48; index 2: OR 3.24, 95% CI 1.32-7.97; index 3: OR 2.23, 95% CI 1.27-8.74) and dose-response relationships were apparent. Conclusion: These results reinforce the hypothesis that heavy occupational lifting may be a relevant risk factor for retinal detachment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.168-176
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• 2011

Objectives: Hundreds of thousands of call center workers are wearing an acoustic device for their businesses, such as telemarketing and customer counseling, and the number of the workers are increasing sharply. Because call center workers always talk to dozens of customers over the headset, they would be placed under the state of a higher risk with their hearing ability. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors that affect the hearing thresholds for the call center workers. Methods: This study investigated hearing losses of 101 workers of 5 call centers in Korea by executing puretone audiometry and self-administered questionnaires. A cross table analysis was processed to compare gender differences between male and female. Male and female hearing thresholds were compared with the Students' t-test, and one-way ANOVA was conducted to observe the difference between non-occupational and occupational characteristics in 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8 kHz hearing thresholds for the female workers. Additionally, multiple regression analysis was conducted to find the factors that affect the 4 kHz hearing thresholds. Results and Conclusions: Male hearing thresholds were higher than those of female except for 8 kHz. In the group having an ear related disease, hearing threshold of male left ear was highly affected rather than that of female in 4 kHz. There were significant differences in the variables of alcohol drinking (2 kHz) and headset volume (8 kHz) in both ears. While this study does not show any significant factors that affect the hearing thresholds in the occupational characteristics, the gender and the previous ear related diseases, non-occupational characteristics, were found as the factors in 4 kHz. It is suggested that the more detailed survey be performed to identify the occupational factors that affect the hearing thresholds in the call center workers based on the result derived from this study.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.225-233
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reliability and the validity of the Korean Occupational Stress Scale(KOSS) in occupational therapists. The data were collected from 214 occupational therapists by using the Korean Occupational Stress Scale. The gathered data were conducted the factor analyses and validation process to ascertain the validity. The results of this study suggested that to estimate occupational stress of occupational therapist, modified version of the KOSS which was consist of eight subscales might be more an appropriate measurement scale than the original version of the KOSS which was composed of seven subscales. Eight subscales of the scale were occupational climate, organizational system, insufficient job control, lack of reward, job demand, interpersonal conflict, job ability and job insecurity, and out of these, job ability was newly added for occupational therapist. Also the results indicated that Cronbach's alpha score of this measurement tool was 0.84, and it means that internal consistency of this scale has good reliability, and the number of questions are also valid. This study has significance to suggest necessary psychometric characteristics of the occupational stress scale for job stress study in occupational therapist.