• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제3권3호
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• pp.192-198
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• 2012

Objectives: Slip and fall accidents in the workplace are one of the top causes of work related fatalities and injuries. Previous studies have indicated that fall risk was related to postural and dynamic stability. However, the usage of this theoretical relationship was limited by laboratory based measuring instruments. The current study proposed a new method for stability assessment by use of inertial measurement units (IMUs). Methods: Accelerations at different body parts were recorded by the IMUs. Postural and local dynamic stability was assessed from these measures and compared with that computed from the traditional method. Results: The results demonstrated: 1) significant differences between fall prone and healthy groups in IMU assessed dynamic stability; and 2) better power of discrimination with multi stability index assessed by IMUs. Conclusion: The findings can be utilized in the design of a portable screening or monitoring tool for fall risk assessment in various industrial settings.

• 한국산업보건학회지
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• 제25권4호
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• pp.482-492
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• 2015

Objectives: Exposure Assessment for workplace hazards where the exposure level is below occupational exposure limits(OELs) has been performed without considering either the degrees of risk or exposure levels and has failed to lead to intervention in many cases. The objective of this study was to suggest and test an application framework for risk assessment methodology under the current exposure assessment system in Korea. Materials: First, we investigated the exposure assessment systems in Korea and other countries. To adopt some risk assessment techniques, we also analyzed risk assessment systems and compared them to exposure assessment systems. A few suggestions were made. We held a public hearing during an industrial hygiene conference and took surveys using a questionnaire. Results: The first suggestion was to implement the risk assessment and exposure assessment through a "one-stop" system. In that case, one expected question would be who has been doing the jobs so far. In most cases, industrial hygiene consulting services or laboratories have been performing exposure assessment for business owners. Business owners are required to perform risk assessment. As two different groups of people will be required to implement two things in a one-stop system, they need to share information. As an information vehicle to share information, commonly filed survey checklists were suggested. The second suggestion was to categorize exposure level into four groups instead of the current binary divisions based on OELs. In the risk assessment system, exposure level is divided into four groups utilizing the cut-points of 10%, 50%, and 100% of OELs. The same schema can be adopted in the exposure assessment system and different levels of requirements can be assigned for each group. The third suggestion was regarding the regulation system. To provide the suggestions some thrust toward being implemented in the field, changes should be made in the legal system. Two different types of new exposure assessment result reporting forms were suggested. Some investigations such as an ergonomic survey are officially accepted as risk assessment under the current legal system. A few items were suggested to be included in the exposure assessment result reporting to be accepted as risk assessment. A pilot study in two small factories was performed and pointed out the strengths and weakness of our suggestions. Conclusions: Discussions and studies on the improvement of the exposure assessment system have been held for decades and no tangible changes have yet been made. We hope this result can help realize healthy lives for workers in Korea.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제33권5호
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• pp.150-156
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• 2018

As the types and usage of chemical increase, modern countries should protect their health and environment from the risk of hazardous chemical. Chemical accidents not only affect humans but also cause huge losses to the environment. Moreover, since its effects do not end in a short period of time, it is necessary to identify the extent of the damage and establish a prevention and response system in advance. In 2015, the Chemical Substances Management Act provided a system for assessing the impact on the people and the environment around the workplace. However, it is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the impact on environmental factors such as vegetation and aquatic, with the current hazard assessment methods. The purpose of this study is to analyze the quantitative risk of environmental receptors. This study improved the existing risk assessment formula by using the environmental vulnerability index and established the end point concentration criterion which can estimate the damage range to environmental media. To verify the results of the study, a virtual accident scenario was selected and a case study was conducted. As a result, the extent of impact on the environmental medium can be calculated, and the degree of environmental risk of the zone can be quantified through the risk analysis considering the environmental vulnerability. This study is expected to increase the reliability of the reliability of the existing risk anaylsis method beacause it is a risk analysis method that can be applied when the environmental factors are absolutely necessary and when the residents and environment are complex.

• 한국직업건강간호학회지
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• 제20권2호
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• pp.212-220
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• 2011

Purpose: This study was to investigate the prevalence & types of workplace violence toward nurses in hospitals, and to understand nurse's coping response, cause of violence and prevention strategy. Methods: The data were collected from 254 nurses working in 9 hospitals in Jeju Province by the self-report from June to August 2010. Results: The respondents experienced unpleasant or insulting words (89.8%), verbal threat (38.2%), physical threat (67.7%), physical injury (32.7%), severe physical injury (2.8%), and sexual harassment (26.4%) during the last one year. The frequent offenders were patients, patients' family and physicians in order. The causes of violence which nurses perceived were personality of offenders (76.4%), lack of assessment of aggressive patients or care givers (42.1%), and lack of explanation to patients or caregivers (33.5%). They reported that coping strategies for workplace violence were 'established reporting system (63.4%)', 'building a cooperative circumstances within team members (58.3%)', and 'formulation of hospital policies for violence prevention and coping (54.3%)'. Conclusion: These findings showed nurses are at considerable risk for workplace violence, and they experience various types of violence from patients, caregivers, and physicians. We suggest that hospitals formulate appropriate policies, guidelines and programs to prevent and cope with workplace violence in hospitals.

• 한국직업건강간호학회지
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• 제28권1호
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• pp.21-35
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• 2019

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to propose directions for the development of Occupational Health Nursing Intervention by identifying the current status and quality of Occupational Health Nursing Intervention Research in domestic industries. Methods: Between 2000 and August of 2018, total of 1,181 Occupational Health Nursing related published references were searched using 4 domestic databases, and of the total, 29 final theses that suited the requirements were analysed In this research, the quality assessment of literature that were selected as suitable was conducted using a tool for assessing the biasing risk of non-randomized studies, RoBANS(Risk of Biasing Assessment Tool for Non-randomized Study). Results: For all research, nonequivalent control group pre-posttest design was the most used as quasi-experimental designs. The effectiveness of intervention was found both in terms of physical and psychological aspects, and the result of the risk of biasing assessment showed a high risk levels in both "confounding variables" and "detection bias". Conclusion: Occupational Health Nursing Intervention have been steadily making improvements in terms of both quality and quantity, and as for more effective intervention developments that improves the physical and mental health of the workers, supplementation in strict research design and in ethical aspects deems necessary.

• 한국산업보건학회지
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• 제32권4호
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• pp.350-358
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• 2022

Objectives: For chemical risk assessment in workplaces, it is necessary to determine a reference value through hazard assessment. In general, OEL (Occupational Exposure Limit) is used for this value. However, since chemicals with OEL were not enough, the concept of DNEL (Derived No Effect Level) was introduced in chemical safety assessment. In this study, the possibility and approach of applying DNEL for chemical risk assessment in domestic workplaces were investigated. Methods: The characteristics of OEL and DNEL were investigated. In addition, ACGIH TLV and GESTIS DNEL were compared and the corresponding scopes were analyzed among the chemical substances notified in South Korea. Results: OEL and DNEL are similar concepts reflecting reference values that should not be exposed based on health effects. While their evaluation and derivation are determined based on similar information and procedures, they may vary depending on the responsible actor, data availability, principles of judgment, and more. As a result of the comparative analysis of ACGIH TLV and GESTIS DNEL, it was confirmed that there is some correlation between TWA and DNEL. The conservatism of DNEL was around 50%. Additionally, it was found that the available range of DNEL among chemicals in South Korea is considerable. Conclusions: This study showed that DNEL can be applied when assessing the risk of chemical substances in domestic workplaces considering several regards. However, since this is not the same level as OEL, we have proposed a proper approach to carry out risk assessment step by step.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• 제30권3호
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• pp.530-539
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• 1997

This study was conducted to assess the health risk on the volatile organic compounds such as toluene, xylene, and styrene in painting workplace. It was monitored through personal air sampling during working time in selected 5 workplaces and analysed using gas chromatography. For the settlement of exposure situation, there were regarded working conditions such as working hours, yearly working days, and working years. Also, Monte-Carlo simulation was used for the induction of hazard index using toxicity value from IRIS(Integrated risk information system) database. The results of risk assessment were summarized as follows. 1. The air concentration of toluene was $7.096{\pm}15,644ppm,\;2.586{\pm}4.275ppm\;for\;xylene,\;1.914{\pm}5.320ppm$ for styrene in blast painting workplaces. The level of toluene was different significantly compared with the level of xylene and styrene. 2. Computated chronic daily intake values of 95th percentile on toluene, xylene and styrene treated by Monte-Carlo simulation were 9.616, 3.567, 2.782 mg/kg/day, respectively. 3. Computated hazard index values of 75th percentile on toluene, xylene and styrene treated by Monte-Carlo simulation were 3.5, 1.0 and 1.6, respectively. Adverse health effects on the toluene, xylene and styrene would be expected by working exposure in selected 5 workplaces since the hazard indices of three compounds were exceeded 1 in the surroundings of 75th percentile though having the low emerged frequency.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제30권3호
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• pp.93-99
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• 2015

Economic burden of work-related musculoskeletal disorder(WMDs) is increasing. Known causes of WMDs include improper posture, repetition, load, and temperature of workplace. Among them, improper postures play an important role. A smart sensor called SensorTag is employed to estimate the trunk postures including flexion-extension, lateral bend, and the trunk rotational speeds. Measuring gravitational acceleration vector in the smart sensor along the tri-orthogonal axes offers an orientation of the object with the smart sensor attached to. The smart sensor is light in weight and has small form factor, making it an ideal wearable sensor for body posture measurement. Measured data from the smart senor is wirelessly transferred for analysis to a smartphone which has enough computing power, data storage and internet-connectivity, removing need for additional hardware for data post-processing. Based on the estimated body postures, WMDs risks can be conviently gauged by using existing WMDs risk assesment methods such as OWAS, RULA, REBA, etc.

• 한국건축시공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국건축시공학회 2022년도 가을 학술논문 발표대회
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• pp.99-100
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• 2022

As the danger of exposure to the asbestos has been revealed, the importance of demolition asbestos in existing buildings has been raised. Extensive body of study has been conducted to evaluate the risk of demolition asbestos, but there were confined types of variables caused by not reflecting categorical information and limitations in collecting quantitative information. Thus, this study aims to derive a model that predicts the risk in workplace of demolition asbestos by collecting categorical and continuous variables. For this purpose, categorical and continuous variables were collected from asbestos demolition reports, and the risk assessment score was set as the dependent variable. In this study, the influence of each variable was identified using logistic regression, and the risk prediction model methodologies were compared through decision tree regression and artificial neural network. As a result, a conditional risk prediction model was derived to evaluate the risk of demolition asbestos, and this model is expected to be used to ensure the safety of asbestos demolition workers.

• 대한의생명과학회지
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• 제23권3호
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• pp.155-160
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• 2017

Biomedical laboratory is full of risks. Risk could be biological, chemical, radioactive, mechanical, physical, fire and electrical. All possible risks need to be identified, evaluated and controlled. A risk management system must be in place to prevent accident or loss of lives and to improve overall workplace safety and productivity. Safety in laboratory is a combination of appropriate risk management system, engineering controls and technical facilities, administrative controls and safety procedures and practices. Laboratory safety culture must be developed so that exposure to hazards for laboratory personnel, community and environment will be minimized or eliminated. In this review, importance of safety in a biomedical laboratory and risk management will be discussed.