• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.314-321
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• 2020

Background: Occupational accidents occur for a variety of reasons, such as unsafe behaviors of workers and insufficient safety equipment at the workplace, but there are also various economic and social factors that can impact working conditions and working environment. This study analyzed the relationship between changes in economic factors and the occurrence of occupational accidents in Korea. Methods: Multilinear regression analysis was used as the analysis model. The general to specific method was also used, which consecutively removes statistically insignificant variables from a general model that includes dependent variables and lagged variables of dependent variables. Results: The frequency of occupational accidents was found to have a statistically significant relationship to economic indicators. The monthly number of cases of occupational injury and disease and fatal occupational injuries were found to be closely related to manufacturing capacity utilization, differences in the production index in the services sector, and commencements of building construction. The increase in equipment investment indicators was found to reduce fatal occupational injuries. Conclusion: The results of this study may be used to develop occupational accident trends or leading indicators, which in turn can be used by organizations that manage and monitor occupational accidents toward taking administrative action designed to reduce occupational accidents. The results also imply that short-term and mid- to long-term economic and social changes that can impact workers, workplaces and working conditions, and workplace organizations must be taken into account if more effective government policies are to be established and implemented toward further prevention of occupational accidents.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.168-174
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• 2010

South Korea's industrial injuries are decreasing overall in the last 32 years. Nevertheless, the fatal occupational injury rate is still higher than in developed countries. This study was conducted to help prevention strategies of occupational injuries for the Republic of Korea. Fatal occupational injury rates were obtained from "Industrial Accident Analysis"of the Korean Ministry of Labor. Poisson regression was used to assess time trends. Socioeconomic indicators were obtained from the Korea Labor Institute and the Statistics Korea. Fatal occupational injury rates were adjusted by year, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between the socio-economic indicators and occupational injuries. In 1975, fatal occupational injury rate was 54.8 per 100,000 workers. With somewhat up and down, it was decreased to 21.0 in 2006. An annual rate of change for the years 1975-2006 was - 1.83%, and for the years 2002-2006 was -5.02%. As economic growth rate, paricipation rate for the age less than 25 and hours of work per week or year increased, fatal occupational injury rate also increased. Conversely, as GDP per capita, paricipation rate or employment rate for female, paricipation rate for the age 25 or more, hourly compensation costs for production workers and services output as percent of GDP increased, fatal occupational injury rate decreased. By the development of safety techniques and the adoption of more legislative constraints, developed economy reduce occupational injuries. Conversely, economic growth may raise occupational injuries. Therefore, prevention strategies are needed to manage both of them. We need to make an effort to prevent occupational injuries due to not only sexual differences, but also job differences between male and female. Preventive strategies are needed to consider the characteristics of younger workers. Addition to wage, other appropriate variables for work condition should be considered together. Extending work hours is need to be regulated with systemic methods.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.231-244
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• 2017

Objective: This study aims to understand the occupational injury characteristics of the workers in the motor vehicle parts (automobile parts) manufacturing industry and to present basic guidelines on accident prevention through accident analysis. Background: There occur many occupational injuries in the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry. But there were few researches for the occupational injuries of the workers in the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry. Method: This study analyzed the data of occupational injuries of 1,609 workers in the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry in 2015. The accident characteristics were analyzed by dividing them into worker related factors and accident related factors. Results: Among the occupational injuries of the workers in the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry, 80.6% of the victims were males, 64.0% were older than 40. 57.8% of the victims were employed by the companies with less than 50 workers. In addition, there was a difference in accident characteristics according to age, work experience, employment type, events or exposures, accident time of the day, agents, natures of injuries and illnesses, injured organs and injured body part. Conclusion: It is important to prevent equipment/machinery accidents. For this purpose, more efforts should be made to establish safety measures faithful to the basics of safety devices and safety work procedures. It is also suggested that prevention of disasters should be intensively carried out for workplaces with less than 50 employees and middle-aged and elderly people. Application: The result can be used to present guidelines for preventative measures for the workers in the motor vehicle parts manufacturing industry including safety education/training.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.523-531
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• 2018

This study was conducted to investigate the relation between working conditions and occupational injuries among Korean employees. This study was based on the 4th Korean Working Conditions Survey(KWCS) and a total of 36,292 data were analyzed. Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate the relation of working conditions and occupational injuries after controlling for individual variables. After control of personal factors, perception of the threat to health or safety(OR=3.77, 95% CI=2.934-4.844), 49-59 working hours(OR=1.63, 95% CI=1.023-2.601), 60 hours or more per week(OR=2.66, 95% CI=1.683-4.197), and manual occupation type(OR=1.76, 95% CI=1.218-2.536) were associated with occupational injuries. Our results indicate that working conditions influence occupational injuries, and the focus should be on prevention and management strategies for occupational injuries to vulnerable workers.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.147-151
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• 2014

Background: Agriculture ranks among the most dangerous trades worldwide. There is, however, still a lack of knowledge on nonfatal injuries in agriculture. The aim of this study was to describe the nature and occurrence of nonfatal injuries in farmers in two counties in central Norway. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to 7,004 farmers in Norway. We asked for information about the respondents and the farm, whether the farmer had had work-related injuries on the farm during the past 12 months, and details about the incidence and seriousness of the injury. Results: A total of 2,699 respondents gave a response rate of 42%. Of the respondents, 249 (9.2%) reported one or more work-related injuries. The most usual cause of injury involved an animal, and >75% of these happened inside the outbuilding. Among these, 17.5% had a consequence of sick leave or a more serious result. When all the accidents were analyzed by stepwise logistic regression, only the variables: works alone, has >3,500 stipulated working hours at the farm, and the type of production were statistical significant explanatory variables for having an injury. Conclusion: Incorporating safety aspects to a greater extend in the design and construction of outbuildings would make a substantial contribution to injury prevention in agriculture.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.32-39
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• 2022

This study analyzed the relationship between occupational accidents in the construction industry and business cycle factors. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to achieve the research purpose; additionally, time-varying parameter estimations were performed to interpret the results. The results obtained for the construction industry revealed a statistically significant relationship between occupational accidents and wage increase rate, unemployment, construction starts, and other factors. The wage increase rate plays a role in reducing occupational accidents because efforts are made to prevent accidents owing to the increase in income loss due to accidents and the demand for increased safety levels. The number of construction starts affects occupational accidents with a time lag of 1 to 2 or 4 months; therefore, it is likely to be used as a leading indicator for estimating fatal accidents in the construction industry. This study highlighted the importance of monitoring socioeconomic changes that could affect the working conditions of workers and workplaces, and production activities in the workplace for the effective prevention of occupational accidents. This study also reveals the necessity of developing a method to operate prevention projects flexibly and the seasonality of industrial characteristics, particularly those of the construction industry where the highest number of fatal occupational injuries occur.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.151-155
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• 2015

The study was designed to identify any trends of injury type as it relates to the age and trade of construction workers. The participants for this study included any individual who, while working on a heavy and highway construction project in the Midwestern United States, sustained an injury during the specified time frame of when the data were collected. During this period, 143 injury reports were collected. The four trade/occupation groups with the highest injury rates were laborers, carpenters, iron workers, and operators. Data pertaining to injuries sustained by body part in each age group showed that younger workers generally suffered from finger/hand/wrist injuries due to cuts/lacerations and contusion, whereas older workers had increased sprains/strains injuries to the ankle/foot/toes, knees/lower legs, and multiple body parts caused by falls from a higher level or overexertion. Understanding these trade-related tasks can help present a more accurate depiction of the incident and identify trends and intervention methods to meet the needs of the aging workforce in the industry.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.61-70
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• 1997

This study is undertaken to investigate the differences of accident characteristics between occupational deaths and nonfatal injuries in overall industry of Korea. The national statistics of industrial accidents in the years 1991-1994 were extracted from the annual publications of Ministry of Labor. To make the statistical comparisons for the accident characteristics, we derived the destributions of occupational deaths and injuries in terms of injured person's age, work experience, tiem of accident, activity at time of accident, accident type, injury type, injured part of body, and agency of accident. The results show that the distributions of the occupational deaths are significantly different from those of the nonfatal injuries in all characteristics investigated in this study. These findings indicate that the accident prevention programs should be developed and implemented by taking into account the characteristics of working environments based on accident analysis.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.35-41
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• 2011

This paper reviewed the relationship between job quality, job satisfaction and occupational injuries, and the mediating effect of job satisfaction. Based on the responses from 278 employees in manufacturing sector, the results of multiple regression analysis showed that all job quality factors(job variety, autonomy, job importance, feedback) have positive relationship with job satisfaction and job satisfaction has negative relationship with number of injuries. Also, job satisfaction was found to mediates the relationship between all job quality factors and occupational injuries.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.101-107
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• 2009

In this study 1,079 occupational accident reports were used to examine the characteristics and causes of occupational injuries in the small-sized textile companies with less than 50 employees. These data were analyzed in terms of age of injured person, work experience, accident type, injury type, and agency of accident. The results show that there are some patterns: (1) injuries occur more frequently in the 40~49yr age group; (2) about half of all accident occurred during the first year of employment; (3) there is a higher percentage of sick people leaving in the 29~90day range; (4) 'caught in and between objects' represents the leading accident type; (5) the most common type of incidence is related to the machinery; (6) 'lower back injuries' is the leading type of occupational disorder. These results can be used to develop more effective accidental occupational injury prevention programs for small-sized textile industries.