• Journal of dental hygiene science
• /
• v.4 no.3
• /
• pp.91-95
• /
• 2004

This study aims to analyze realities of oral health and related factors, and establish Structural Equation Modeling. The subjects of study were 9,340 elderly over age 65 who took the health examination(the first) for the local insured which National Health Insurance Corporation carried out in the survey area mentioned below from January 2002 to December 2002. The areas surveyed were 4 big cities including Seongbuk-ku, Seoul, 5 medium cities including Wonjusi, Gangwon-do, and 5 Counties including Yeong deok County, Kyeongbuk. Considering location and the scale of population, firstly, big unit areas(metropolitan city, province) were selected according to convenience, secondly, low unit areas(city, county, district) were selected randomly. The subjects were the elderly who took all tests including an oral examination and filled in the questionnaire. Major results from analysis are as follows: 1. Review of Composition Conception Validity As a result of analyzing composition conception validity of SEM including posture test, urine test, blood test, habits of eating, drinking and smoking, oral symptoms, and oral health status, using fit index such as GFI, CFI, TLI, and RMSEA, all were within fit range and composition conception validity was recognized. 2. As a result of analyzing SEM to find the relationship between each factor and oral health status, it was confirmed that all factors except urine test affected oral health status and the synthetic SEM to explain it could be established. In result, we could verify that the elderly of rural areas who had lesser experience of visiting a clinic and oral prophylaxis had a higher rate of caries, missing teeth, and denture need, and drinking and smoking negatively affected the rate of caries, periodontal, and missing teeth. Also, periodontal diseases were observed from 43.2% of the total elderly and much from the lower age. Most of oral disease can be prevented by right oral health behavior. Therefore through oral health professionals from each district public health center of the nation, oral health education for the elderly about right eating habits and oral health care should be carried out systematically and policy change to increase access to dental service is required lest that visiting a dental clinic should be impossible or oral health behaviors such as oral prophylaxis and denture wearing should be neglected by economic, geographical barriers. Also, to establish SEM to explain the relationship between oral health status and systemic health, more accurate test methods and effective index development should be preceded. Because items developed by National Health Insurance Corporation applied to this study without alteration, structuring a model had the uppermost limit. Continual study seems to be needed.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.392-402
• /
• 2023

The purpose of this study was to conduct an exploratory and descriptive survey study design to examine 1) the physical difficulty by care task, 2) overall occupation-related physical burden by the characteristics of caregivers and care receivers, and 3) the level of help by the use of care robots and devices among formal caregivers working in facilities for older adults. In this study, 308 formal caregivers working in facilities were recruited from 8 nursing homes and 5 geriatric hospitals between Aug. 2021 and Sept. 2022 in South Korea. There were significant differences in ADLs between nursing homes and geriatric hospitals: eating, dressing, hygiene, transfer to bed, transfer to the toilet and walking. For each care item, the items the caregivers had the most difficulty ranked first were bathing, excretion assistance, and mobility support. The difference in occupation-related physical burden according to general characteristics was found to have statistically significant differences in female and bad perceived health. Among the 205 caregivers who had experience using care robots and devices, pressure ulcer prevention was the most experienced one, and those also were the most helpful and exercise aids were the least helpful. In order to reduce the physical burden on care providers, it is necessary to develop and introduce a care robots centered on the care site. Furthermore, national level public support systems are required to enable facilities to actively utilize care robots and devices.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
• /
• v.36 no.3
• /
• pp.248-256
• /
• 2021

A total of 120 samples corresponding to 12 categories of dried processed fishery products distributed in Gyeonggi-do were examined for radioactivity contamination (¹³¹I, ¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs) and heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury). One natural radioactive material, ⁴⁰K, was detected in all products, while the artificial radioactive materials ¹³¹I, ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs were not detected at above MDA (minimum detectable activity) values. The detection ranges of heavy metals converted by biological basis were found as follows: Pb (N.D.-0.332 mg/kg), Cd (N.D.-2.941 mg/kg), As (0.371-15.007 mg/kg), Hg (0.0005-0.0621 mg/kg). Heavy metals were detected within standard levels when there was an acceptable standard, but the arsenic content was high in most products, although none of the products had a permitted level of arsenic. In the case of dried processed fishery products, there are products that are consumed by restoring moisture to its original state, but there are also many products that are consumed directly in the dry state, so it will be necessary to set permitted levels for heavy metals considering this situation in the future. In addition, Japan has decided to release contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean, so there is high public concern about radioactivity contamination of food, including fishery products. Therefore, continuous monitoring of various food items will be necessary to ease consumers' anxiety.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.195-201
• /
• 2007

Purpose: As a part of the analysis of home-based cancer patients management of public health renters in cities, counties and districts across the nation, this study is to understand the degree of patient demands for that management and the degree and scope of the supply for the patient's demand. Methods: Developed the questionnaire which was constituted of degree of demand and supply for home-based cancer patient management and analyzed data centering on the frequencies and percentages by utilizing SPSS WIN 12.0. Results: The services provided through the home-based cancer patients management project include physical, emotional, spiritual and education/informative services. A survey was conducted for home-based cancer patients about these services, and its result showed that the degree of demand and supply was highest for emotional service, followed by education/informative service, spiritual service and physical service in the order of the demand-supply degree. When main items for each service were examined, it was found that: in the case of physical service, pain control was provided murk lower than its demand, while excretion disorder control and individual hygiene is provided murk more than its demand. In the case of emotional service, the degree of demand was overall higher than that of supply; spiritual service was provided appropriately to the degree of demand. Conclusion: This study examines the home-based canter patients management project of public health centers and compares and analyzes the degree of demand for patient services and the degree of services that are actually provided. The findings could be used as based data for the development of effective programs in future on the basis of actual demands of home-based cancer patients.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.121-132
• /
• 1992

Pesticides are regarded as one of indispensable materials used in agriculture to protect pests and to keep the agricultural productions steadily. However, food contamination arisen from their application has brought about public concerns for safety suspicion to human health. A brief presentation is given in this paper on what has been conducted against pesticide residues to evaluate and ensure the safety of agro-porducts. The commonest countermeasures to keep safety would be tile establishment of MRls and safe-use guidelines of pesticides according to good agricultural practices. Korean MRls have been established on 38 chemicals with 56 commodities and in the case of safe-use guidelines 344 formulation items have been done by the government On the other hand, no satisfactory information is still available to evalute the actual residue levels in domestic agro-products, but a cautious proposal could be suggested through the fragmentary monitoring data of pesticide residues, so that the current residue levels would be far from potent hazard enough to cause chronic impact on human. The most important thing is to have the farmers keep safe use guidelines at pesticide application for the production of safe agricultural commodities.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Food Hygiene and Safety Conference
• /
• 1992.07a
• /
• pp.21-32
• /
• 1992

Pesticides are regarded as one of indispensable materials used in agriculture to protect pests and to keep the agriculture productions steadily. However, food contamination arisen from their application has brought about public concerns for safety suspicion to human health. A brief presentation is given in this paper on what has been conducted against pesticide residues to evaluate and ensure the safety of agro-products. The commonest countermeasures to keep safety would be the establishment of MRLs and safe-use guidelines of pesticides according to good agricultural practices. Korean MRLs have bun established on 38 chemicals with 56 commodities and in the case of safe-use guidelines 344 formulation items have been done by the government. On the other hand, no satisfactory information is still available to evalute the actual residue levels in domestic agro-products, but a cautious proposal could be suggested through the fragmentary monitoring data of pesticide residues, so that the current residue levels would be far from potent hazard enough to cause chronic impact on human. The most important thing is to have the farmers keep safe use guidelines at pesticide application for the production of safe agriculture commodities.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.43 no.6
• /
• pp.535-542
• /
• 2010

Objectives: Exposure assessment is a major challenge faced by studies that evaluate the association between pesticide exposure and adverse health outcomes. The objective of this study was to investigate the reliability of information that farmers self-report regarding their pesticide use. Methods: Twenty five items based upon existing questionnaires were designed to focus on pesticide exposure. In 2009, a selfadministrated survey was conducted on two occasions four weeks apart among 205 farmers residing in Gyeonggi and Gangwon provinces. For a reliability measure, we calculated the percentage agreement, the kappa statistics and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between the two reports according to the characteristics of the subjects. Results: Agreement for ever-never use of any pesticide was 96.4% (kappa 0.61). For both 'years used' and 'age at the first use' of overall pesticides, high agreement was obtained (ICC: 0.88 and, 0.78, respectively), whereas those of 'days used' and 'hours used' were relatively low (ICC: 0.42 and, 0.66, respectively). The kappa value for the use of personal protective equipment ranged from 0.46 to 0.59, and hygiene activities came out at 0.19 to 0.37. The agreement for individual pesticide use ranged widely and there was relatively low agreement due to the low response rates. The reliability scores did not significantly vary according to gender, age, the education level, the types of crop or the years of farming. Conclusions: Our results support that carefully designed, self-reported information on ever-never pesticide use among farmers is reliable. However, the reliability of data on individual pesticide exposure may be unstable due to low response rates and needs to be refined.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.375-387
• /
• 2012

The objective of this study is investigation of contamination levels and assessment of health risk effects of heavy metals in herbal pills. 31 Items and 93 samples were obtained for this investigation from major herbal medicine producing areas, herbal markets and on-line supermarkets from Jan to Jun in 2010. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer method was conducted for the quantitative analysis of Pb, Cd and As. In addition, the mercury analyzer system was conducted for that of Hg without sample digestion. The average contents of heavy metals in samples were as follows : 0.87 mg/kg for Pb, 0.08 mg/kg for Cd, 2.87 mg/kg for As and 0.16 mg/kg for Hg, respectively. In addition, the average contents of heavy metals in different parts of plants, including cortex, fructus, herba, radix, seed, algae and others were 0.63 mg/kg, 3.94 mg/kg, 1.42 mg/kg, 1.05 mg/kg, 0.16 mg/kg, 22.31 mg/kg and 10.17 mg/kg, respectively. After the estimations of dietary exposure, the acceptable daily intake (ADI), the average daily dose (ADD), the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) and the relative hazard of heavy metals were evaluated. As the results, the relative hazards compared to PTWI in samples were below the recommended standard of JECFA as Pb 3.1%, Cd 0.9%, Hg 0.5%. Cancer risks through slope factor (SF) by Ministry of Environment Republic Korea and Environmental Protection Agency was $4.24{\times}10^{-7}$ for Pb and $3.38{\times}10^{-4}$ for As (assuming that the total arsenic content was equal to the inorganic arsenic). Based on our results, possible Pb-induced cancer risks in herbal pills according to parts used including cortex, fructus, herba, radix, seed, algae and others were $1.95{\times}10^{-7}$, $1.45{\times}10^{-6}$, $2.14{\times}10^{-7}$, $6.27{\times}10^{-7}$, $1.99{\times}10^{-8}$, $3.61{\times}10^{-7}$ and $9.64{\times}10^{-8}$, respectively. Possible As-induced cancer risks in herbal pills by parts used including cortex, fructus, herba, radix, seed, algae and others were $1.54{\times}10^{-5}$, $7.24{\times}10^{-5}$, $1.23{\times}10^{-4}$, $2.02{\times}10^{-5}$, $3.25{\times}10^{-6}$, $2.18{\times}10^{-3}$ and $5.67{\times}10^{-6}$ respectively. Taken together, these results indicate that the majority of samples except for some samples with relative high contents of heavy metals were safe.