• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.139-147
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• 2024

Objective: The introduction of government support programs for small businesses in 1993 aimed to enhance awareness and capabilities in industrial health management among small business proprietors, marking a continuous expansion over the past three decades. Despite this growth, there has been a conspicuous absence of comprehensive evaluations regarding the efficacy of these initiatives. In response, this study endeavors to conduct a thorough policy evaluation. Method: Through a meticulous approach, we conducted an analysis of in-depth interviews with eight individuals possessing expertise in the administration of government support programs for small businesses. These interviews were sourced from personnel affiliated with government ministries and public agencies. Results: In the analysis, it was found that small-scale business government support programs operate primarily based on quantity rather than receiving support from business owners regarding their necessity or utility. Consequently, these programs have failed to yield substantial effects on altering the perception of business owners or improving the working environment within the businesses. Conclusion: This study assumes significance in its capacity to discern intricate procedural challenges in program implementation, which often elude quantitative scrutiny. Furthermore, it provides pivotal insights for enhancing government support programs.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.254-260
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• 2007

Trichloroethylene(TCE) is widely used as a degreasing solvent in workplaces. TCE is primarily toxic to the nervous system, however, systemic disorder like Stevens-Johnson syndrome has been recently reported in small-scale factories, where the government has had limited information of chemical use. A survey was performed to investigate the actual condition of using TCE and to provide practical information to occupational health service agencies and professionals. This survey was carried out on 103 factories out of 430 factories which were conducted periodic work environment measurement for TCE. Degreasing was the most popular reason for using TCE in Korea, which reached to 94%. TCE was also used as a solvent for rubber in the coating or molding process, and adhesives in the bonding process. Metal fabrication was the most common as 23%, followed by assembling automobile parts (17%), and machinery (12%). Workers exposed to TCE during full-shift were 52% while 48% were exposed during short period of the shift or intermittently. Manual or semi-automatic work occupied 87% while automatic work was just 13%. Though automatic work by a closed system was generally lower exposed to TCE, compared to manual work, it can cause a high exposure when the maintenance system is improper. Semi-automatic work especially like open-top degreasing process can cause a high exposure when local exhaust system with condensing and refrigerating coils in the degreaser does not work well. In conclusion, the survey showed nationwide status of TCE exposure in various aspects. It can be used to monitor workplaces and workers exposed to TCE to prevent occupational diseases.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.477-486
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• 2014

Objective:This study aims to devise industrial injury prevention measures by analyzing industrial injury characteristics including the status of industrial injuries, source of industrial injury and accident type in order to prevent aging workers' industrial injuries that account for more than half in the workplaces in agriculture. Background: Continuous migration from farm to city takes place among young people in rural areas in Korea, a traditionally agricultural country due to rapid industrialization and economic development. The aging rate in rural areas in 2013 was 37.3%, about three times higher than the total aging rate of 12.2% in Korea. According to industrial injury statistics of the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the number of industrial injuries in agriculture shows an uptrend and the industrial injuries of aging workers account for more than 50% each year. Method: Of the 2,970 industrial injury cases occurred in the workplaces in agriculture for five years during 2008 and 2012 offered by a national agency related to health and safety, this study analyzed 1,767 industrial injury cases of aging workers. Results: As a result of an analysis on aging workers' industrial injuries by company size in agriculture, 89.8% of the total number of industrial injuries were analyzed to occur in small scale company. According to aging workers' industrial injuries by source of industrial injury and accident type, the outdoor floor and a fall were analyzed to be the highest at 16.5% and 26.1%, respectively. Conclusion: This study analyzed aging workers' industrial injuries by company size, age, job duration, accident severity, gender, nationality, the source of industrial injury and accident type in order to identify industrial injury characteristics in agriculture. Application: The identification of industrial injury characteristics of aging workers in agriculture is judged to be helpful to devising effective measures to prevent industrial injuries.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.24 no.6_2
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• pp.899-908
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• 2021

It is expected that the global market for vessel repair and remodeling will grow up to the scale of about 25 billion dollars by 2023. Korea's shipbuilding industry is leading the world with its international competitiveness in design and production technology. The actual status of vessel repair industry, however, is poor as there are only two or three companies for vessel repair that can deal with large vessels in the area of Gyeongnam. The reason is that civil complaints are filed severely about environmental problems and environment-related regulations are so strict that it is fairly hard to get governmental approval for the operation of a vessel repair workplace. Domestic vessel repair companies mainly target small- and medium-sized vessels. There are only few workplaces that can carry out regular examination or repair work on large vessels such as LNG vessels, and due to the high price of vessel repair, most of the domestic repair work on large vessels including LNG vessels tends to be snatched by markets in Southeast Asia or China. Despite the tremendous domestic demand of Korea that has established the world's first shipbuilding industry and world's sixth biggest harbor infrastructure, its vessel repair industry can be said to be in very poor condition. In order to vitalize vessel repair industry, this study is aimed to analyze the environmental influence of vessel repair workplaces in Gyeongnam where vessel repair companies are concentrated and suggest standard processes by analyzing vessel repair processes precisely.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.121-131
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• 2000

This study was conducted to acquire data in order to institute an effective industrial accident compensation insurance(IACI) system. The subjects were employers and employees in small scale industries which have less than 5 employees. The questionnaires consisted of questions on perception and need for IACI. A total of cases were 181 employers and 105 employees participated in the study. Perception and need of employers and employees were assessed using the ANOVA, t-test. The results were as follows ; 1. Workplaces examined mostly in manufacturing(78.9%), industries with one employee(44.1%). Beneficiary rate of IACI 4.4%. 2. 60.0% of employees had experienced an industrial accident and in most cases employers paid the cost of medical treatment. 45.0% of employers nd 50.0% of employees were not aware that IACI had been put into effect starting July, 1, 2000. 52.0% of employers had no type of industrial accident compensation. 3. The need of outcome measures, especially of employers and employees who had an IACE, were higher than those without an IACI. Employers and employees who had experienced an industrial accident outnumbered those who hadn't. The results of this study reveal that there is a great need for the institution of an IACI and health promotion policy in small scale industries.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.631-639
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• 2022

Recently, the government is trying to change the paradigm of occupational safety by enforcing the entire revision of the Industrial Safety and Health Act and the Punishment of Serious Accidents Act with the goal of reducing the occupational accident and death rate by half. In particular, small-scale workplaces with less than 50 employees or less than 100 million won have difficulties in establishing a safety and health management system due to lack of safety and health management competency and lack of will of business owners. Therefore, this study attempted to identify problems and suggest improvement measures through an expert survey on the overall business area of the small business safety and health technology support project, which is one of the government's policies.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.386-393
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• 2018

Purpose: Chicken cutting is done manually, which is inefficient, unhygienic, and carries a high accident risk during processing. This study develops and evaluates an automatic chicken cutting machine that suits small-scale workplaces. Methods: This study developed an automatic chicken cutting machine equipped with four traverse blades and two longitudinal blades. An experiment was conducted with various blade rotating speeds and tray feed rates to evaluate the machine's performance. The chicken loss rate and chicken piece weights were measured to calculate the coefficient of variation (CV), thereby determining processing uniformity. Results: The optimal cutting conditions with the smallest chicken loss rate were 0.05 m/s tray feed speed and 18.8 m/s and 16.4 m/s for the traverse and longitudinal blades, respectively. The processing ran at 55.3 chickens per hour and the chicken pieces were more uniform when using the device than for hand-work processed pieces. Conclusions: The loss rate increased in proportion to the cutting-blade rotation speed due to the high cutting rate in meat. The loss rate also increased as the tray feed speed slowed because the cutting blade pushed the chicken meat. The tray feed speed should be increased to improve the amount processed per hour.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.74-92
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• 2001

This study was carried out to investigate the types of health documents for nurses, the content of informations in the documents, and writing behaviors of occupational health nurses. Health documents were collected from 7 nurses who were working in 7 group occupational health agencies (GOHA) located at Seoul and Inchon area in Korea. The collected health documents written in January to June 1999 were analyzed, and revealed the following results. 1) The occupational health nurses were using 9 to 18 different types of health documents. The contents of the documents were considered quite similar to each other with slightly different headings and items to record. Among different types of health documents. Health Management Card for Workplace', Nursing performance sheet and Workplace environmental checklist were in common among nurses and were used for content analysis. 2) The 'Health Management Card for Workplace' was the only formal sheet of small-scale-enterprises (SSE) for health management, in which health and safety related information was recorded. The information on nursing services were recorded on the Nursing performance sheet, which has slightly different names on each type with similar contents. The Workplace environment checklist was for the information on general work environment management and mainly status of workplace hygiene. This checklist is to be used by or with nurses among the 3 types health professional team such as doctor, hygienist, and nurse, but it seemed not being used frequently by nurses. 3) Analysis on recording tendencies of nurses revealed that the writing styles of occupational health nurses were associated with 'memo' using a few number of words and short sentences. The amount of information by this kind of recording style was considered not enough for health management situation. The possible reasons for nurses to use this writing style might be insufficient time for recording and improper designed format of health documents. Because nurses working in SSE spend more time on the roads to visit workplaces, nurses may not found enough time for recording properly within their working time. In addition, the health records were designed to focus on the frequency of nurse's performance in certain types of work rather than on the method they used to deal with health problems. In conclusion, this study suggests that some steps are necessary to develop health documents and recording system which is appropriate to occupational health nurses. The educational need for nurses on appropriate recording behavior is also recommended.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.131-144
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• 2006

For the purpose of preparing the fundamental data on working environment of small scale manufacturing industries and preventing the occupational diseases of workers in these industries, authors surveyed the status of working environment to several chemical substances and physical agents by types of industry and types of process in the small scale manufacturing industries with less than five workers in Gimhae including 235 workplaces, 14 types of industry and 25 types of process from January 2002 to December 2004. This measurement method was work environment measurement method (established in Ministry of Labor, Korea), analytical methods (2nd Ed.) of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and manual of analytical methods (4th Ed.) of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and collected data was analyzed by using SPSS 10.0 for windows, the results were as follows: 1. Noise generated in 14 types of industry and 22 types of process. an actual level of mean exposure (90.7 dB(A)) exceeded threshold limit values (TLVs) in manufacture of other transport equipment. An actual level of mean exposure (90.2dB) exceeded TLVs in the process of wire-drawing and 90.4dB in the process of wire-stranding. 2. Dusts of type I, II, III were generated in 9 types of industry and 8 types of process. Its mean concentration did not exceed TLVs. 3. Heavy metals (Pb, Mn, Cr, Ni) were generated in 7 types of industry and 7 types of process. Its mean concentration did not exceed TLVs. 4. 16 kinds of organic solvents were generated in 11 types of industry and 6 types of process. Its mean concentration did not exceed TLVs. As the above results, chemical substances and physical agents were generated in the several different types of industry and process of the manufacturing industry with less than five workers, and only mean level of noise was exceeded TLVs. In case of exceeding threshold limit values, improvement of work environment is actively needed, and work environment management should be performed continuously for prevention of an occupational diseases and work related diseases.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.315-322
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• 2013

Objectives: This study was conducted in order to prepare fundamental data and assess the short-term effects of applying cerebrovascular disease prevention programs by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) in Korea. Methods: The number of study subjects was 2,676 workers (58.5%) who were able to evaluate the level of incidence risk at pre- and post-applications of the program, among the 4,576 total workers who were enrolled in the cerebrovascular disease prevention program during 2011. The guidelines for this prevention program were adopted from KOSHA GUIDE H-1-2010. To determine the program' effectiveness, the workers'risks for cerebrovascular disease were assessed pre- and post-application of the program. Results: The blood pressure level was significantly reduced by 4.09 mmHg for the mean systolic blood pressures and 5.47 mmHg for diastolic blood pressures, respectively. The mean level of total cholesterol and BMI were also reduced significantly by 2.07 g/dl and 0.1 $0.1kg/m^2$. The rate of smoking was decreased by 4.0% and the percentage of workers engaging in regular exercise was increased by 29.8%. The level of overall cerebrovascular disease risk was reduced among 1,451 (70.7%) of 2,052 workers at low risk and above. The level of cerebrovascular disease risk was lower in the improved group for health behavior than the unimproved group (odds ratio =1.7, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The author considers that the application of the cerebrovascular disease prevention program by the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency reduced cerebrovascular diseases risks among workers who were enrolled in the cerebrovascular disease prevention program and it must be accompanied by an improvement in health behavior for prevention of cerebrovascular disease.