• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.89-95
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• 2016

Keeping the gas pipelines in the common utility tunnel is useful because it has a lower risk of corrosion than conventional burial, and can prevent from excavating construction. But, explosions in common utility tunnels can cause greater damage from the blast overpressure compared to outdoor explosions, due to nature of the confined environment. Despite this fact, however, research on common utility tunnels has been limited to fire hazard and little has been studied on the dangers of explosions. This study developed scenarios of methane gas explosion caused by gas leak from gas piping within the common utility tunnel followed by unknown ignition; the study then calculated the extent of the impact of the explosion on the facilities above, and suggested the needs for designing additional safety measures. Two scenarios were selected per operating condition of safety devices and the consequence analysis was carried out with FLACS, one of the CFD tools for explosion simulation. The overpressures for all scenarios are substantial enough to completely destroy most of the buildings. In addition, we have provided additional measures to secure safety especially reducing incident frequency.

• Journal of Korean Society of Disaster and Security
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2012

This paper focused on the new theory and algorithm improving the citizen's safety which they experience to change from the developing country to the developed country, and analyzed the gained and applicate results, and show the theories and application's evidence for the incident prevention of citizen's life and house. The Safety Monitoring Theory for human security, show the six theories for which they are analyzed and reduced the accident's death, as is the priority of the disaster prevention activity, its decision, continuous minimization of the accident's death number, the environment security, the personal security, the community security. This study is applied to educate and exercise the disaster prevention and safety management's program which applied the seven step's model of the safety monitoring, show on continuously improvement effects through the case study of the personal's and team's monitoring during five years.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2008

The purpose of this survey was to identify ergonomic risk factors of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) and understand the current MSD risk status in the wholesale/retail industry. The field survey was conducted at 120 wholesale/retail establishments, and the cause of MSD occurred from the national industrial accident statistics by the Ministry of Labor in 2006 was analyzed in terms of company size, a term of work, job title, and cause of occurrence. The numbers of disasters on MSD were 602 which were included 432 disasters who met with low back pain by incident. A checklist was developed by KOSHA to use for the field survey. A total of 419 tasks were identified at the 120 establishments surveyed. The highest frequency was Task 2(45%) which was mostly observed in repetitive work (e.g. displaying, scanning, cutting or wrapping of goods). The second and third were Task 9(34%) and Task 8(14%) which were identified in manual materials handling (e.g. lifting, lowering, carrying or stocking of goods). The results suggest that the three Tasks should be first considered for the control in wholesale/retail industry and that exposure to MSD risk factors in those Tasks should be primarily addressed in order to reduce MSD risk in that industry.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.61-68
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• 2010

Objectives: The extent of the occupational cancer burden has rarely been estimated in Korea. The aim of this study is to provide an estimation of the population attributable fraction (PAF) of occupational cancer in Korea. Methods: Nine kinds of Group 1 carcinogens addressed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and 7 kinds of cancer were selected for the target carcinogens and diseases, respectively. The prevalence of carcinogen-exposed workers was estimated and correction factors were applied so that the value would be representative of the total population. Data on relative risk (RR) were taken from IARC reports and were compared with the RRs from the studies on Korean workers. The PAF was estimated according to Levin's formula. Results: The proportion of the general Korean population exposed to carcinogens was 9.7%. The PAF of total cancer was 1.1% for incident cancer cases and 1.7% for cancer deaths. The PAFs of lung cancer and leukemia were 7.0% and 4.5%, respectively. With the RRs reported from Korean studies, the PAF for lung cancer and leukemia were 3.7% and 3.4%, respectively. Conclusion: The PAF in this study (1.1%) was lower than that reported in previous studies (2-4%) from developed countries. Considering that only 9 of the 29 kinds of Group 1 carcinogens were included in this study, the PAF might be underestimated. However, because the process of industrialization in Korea differs from that which occurred in other developed countries, 1.1% of the PAF might be appropriate for Korea.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.108-115
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• 2017

This study evaluated a preventive information communication system for the storage, handing, and transportation of hazardous materials according to the hazardous materials safety management law of Korea. At present, the chemical management system has very little information on accident responses due to a problem in the initial response. Therefore, this study was designed to improve the hazardous materials safety management law as an advanced method for simultaneous accident prevention and response, such as GHS system. This can also cause confusion in industry, such as manufacturing and import-export companies, because safety management laws and the GHS system are very different from the hazard classification systems. This study suggests a harmonization plan between the hazardous materials safety management law and the GHS classification system through an analysis of the hazardous materials classification system of major advanced countries.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.101-107
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• 2012

The statistics of industrial accident reported by ministry of Employment and Labor denoted a significant increase of musculoskeletal disorders(MSDs) after 1993, and showed the higher incident rate by 71.3% over the overall worker's disorders. Also, it was expected that Korean society will become the post-aged society in 2026 with 20.8% of elderly who is over 65 years old. The reports suggest possible problems caused by the older worker known to have reduced working ability than the young counterparts. On this basis, the goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between MSDs symptoms and work ability in the shipbuilding industry. To achieve this goal, this study distributed a questionnaire for total 1,244 shipbuilding employers, and used 910 employers' reports which revealed validity for this study. The questionnaire included the MSDs symptoms report developed by the Korean Occupational Safety and Health Association(KOSHA) and the work ability index(WAI) developed by Finnish Institute of Occupational Health(FIOH). Results showed no relationship between MSDs symptoms and age, years of work and exercise. Also, the work ability was increased until 44 years old, but it was decreased after that time because of the reduced physical capacity. Meanwhile, the years of work and exercise have positive correlation with work ability. However, the results revealed significant relationships between WAI and age, years of work, task characteristics and exercise. All together, the MSDs symptoms have a close relationship with the work ability in that the work ability of workers with the MSDs symptoms was reduced. This study may suggest the needs of more efforts and attention on the MSDs prevention to increase the work ability.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.131-140
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• 2020

Purpose: This study aims to describe the characteristics of safety incidents and factors associated with injury for patients with Home Mechanical Ventilation (HMV) at the hospital. Methods: This is a retrospective study. Data were collected from the work log of respiratory home care nurses and the patients' electronic medical records were investigated. In order to compare group differences, independent t-test and χ² test were used. Associated factors with injury development were identified by generalized mixed modeling analysis controlling for age and gender. Results: A total of 304 patients on HMV were included in this study, among which 129 (42.4%) experienced 352 HMV-related incidents. Mean frequency of incidents for each patient was 5.11±3.98, ranged from 1 to 15 times. In 19.0% of the incidents, injury was developed. Types of incident and persons involved in the incidents were significantly associated with the patient's injury. In the case of the safety incidents, patient's injury was significantly higher in accidents caused by respiratory circuit problems compared to those caused by problems with the ventilator operation by the medical staff (coefficient=1.25, p=.020). In addition, in the case of those involved in the safety incidents, patient's injury was significantly higher in the accident caused by the patient family members or caregivers than that caused by the medical personnel (coefficient=1.25, p=.019). Conclusion: In order to minimize injury caused by incidents in patients with HMV, hospitals need to provide systemic education to their medical staff and caregivers to enhance awareness of the importance of reporting and safety management.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.37-54
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• 2017

Objectives: The purpose of this preliminary study was to identify the nurses' perception regarding disclosure of patient safety incidents (DPSI) and to evaluate the effectiveness of education for DPSI. Methods: DPSI education was conducted for nurses majoring in clinical nurse specialist at an university. Before and after the education, the nurses made a questionnaire to evaluate the perception of DPSI. The questionnaires were divided into four categories: first, overall perception of the DPSI; second, recognition evaluation of the DPSI using hypothetical case, third, opinion on legal and nonlegal measures for facilitating the DPSI; and fourth, socio-demographic factors. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was performed on the DPSI questionnaire response to compare the perceptions before and after the education. Results: A total of 10 nurses participated in the education. DPSI education showed the possibility of improving the overall perception, necessity, effect, obstacle, and promotion method of DPSI, although there were also several responses where there was no statistical significance. In particular, DPSI education led to statistically significance change in the perception of obstacles for DPSI. For example, the number of respondents who agreed to the item "DPSI will increase the incidence of medical lawsuits." was 7 before education but decreased to 3 after education (P-value: .025) Furthermore, nurses' perception of DPSI from this study was generally positive regardless of education. Conclusion:In the future, it will be necessary to carry out DPSI education and training and to evaluate its effectiveness for more nurses.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.1-8
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to suggest the rupture disk design(size) and application at the two phase(gas-liquid) flow by runaway reaction at batch reactor. The definition of runaway reaction is abnormally exothermic reaction by the uncontrolled cooling water or deviated operating condition. As a result, the temperature of reactor is rapidly increasing. The causes of runaway reaction are either self-heating reaction or sleeper reaction. General methods of rupture disk size or safety valve are not suitable in the runaway reaction, because of temperature and pressure increasing rapidly in the reactor and the phases of relieving fluid is 2-phase flow. This study case of the reactor incident, the depressurization system such as safety valve and vent installed, however, the system did not relieved the pressure of reactor suitably. The orifice size of the safety valve were designed too small because the size had not been considered the phenomena and character of reaction. The batch reactor design should be considered by referring to the possibility of runaway reaction proposed in this study and the size of rupture disk design method considering 2-phase flow.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.24-32
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• 2024

Background: Learning from incidents for accident prevention is a two-stage process, involving the investigation of past accidents to identify the causal factors, followed by the identification and implementation of remedial measures to address the identified causal factors. The focus of past research has been on the identification of causal factors, with limited focus on the identification and implementation of remedial measures. This research begins to contribute to this gap. The motivation for the research is twofold. First, previous analyses show the recurring nature of accidents within the Ghanaian mining industry, and the causal factors also remain the same. This raises questions on the nature and effectiveness of remedial measures identified to address the causes of past accidents. Secondly, without identifying and implementing remedial measures, the full benefits of accident investigations will not be achieved. Hence, this study aims to assess the nature of remedial measures proposed to address investigation causal factors. Method: The study adopted SMARTER from business studies with the addition of HMW (H - Hierarchical, M - Mapping, and W - Weighting of causal factors) to analyse the recommendations from 500 individual investigation reports across seven different mines in Ghana. Results: The individual and the work environment (79%) were mostly the focused during the search for causes, with limited focus on organisational factors (21%). Forty eight percentage of the recommendations were administrative, focussing on fixing the problem in the immediate affected area or department of the victim(s). Most recommendations (70.4%) were support activities that only enhance the effectiveness of control but do not prevent/mitigate the failure directly. Across all the mines, there was no focus on evaluating the performance of remedial measures after their implementation. Conclusion: Identifying sharp-end causes leads to proposing weak recommendations which fail to address latent organisational conditions. The study proposed a guide for effective planning and implementation of remedial actions.