• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.104-109
• /
• 2012

Singapore, an island republic of over 5 million inhabitants, has 3.1 million workers. Most are employed in the service, finance and tourist/transport industry. Significant numbers work in manufacturing, construction and heavy industry. Following a series of construction and shipyard accidents with multiple deaths in 2004, the government announced its intention to reduce workplace fatalities from 4.9 to 2.5 per 100,000 by 2015. There was strong political will to achieve this target. The strategic approaches were to build workplace safety and health (WSH) capabilities; implement legislative changes with enforcement; promote benefits of WSH and recognize best practices, and enhance partnership with stakeholders. The anticipated outcomes were to reduce workplace fatality and injury rates; have WSH as an integral part of business; and establish a progressive and pervasive WSH culture. With these measures, the workplace fatality rate declined from 4.9/100,000 in 2004, to 2.2/100,000 in 2010. However, other confounding factors could also account for this decline, and have to be considered. The next target, announced by Singapore's Prime Minister in 2008, is to further reduce the workplace fatality rate to 1.8/100,000 by 2018, and to have "one of the best workplace safety records in the world".

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
• /
• v.30 no.4
• /
• pp.186-195
• /
• 2021

Purpose: The current status and rationale of industrial accidents needs to be examined to develop scientific and systemic preventive measures. Methods: The aim of this study is to analyze the current data on industrial accidents provided by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and categorize work-related deaths by types of industries and annual report. Results: First, the highest number of deaths occurred in industries that had less than 50 people. Second, in the manufacturing industry, the highest death rate was found in workers in the age group 50-59 years. In the construction industry, workers aged 50 and above had the highest number of deaths. In other industries, workers aged 60 and above had the highest number of deaths. Third, the highest number of deaths occurred in workers with less than one year of experience in any industry Fourth, in most industries, the highest work-related deaths occurred during weekdays (Monday~Friday). In 2015, the warehouse delivery industry had 33% higher work-related deaths on the weekends (Saturday and Sunday) as compared to other industries. Fifth, in most industries, the highest work-related deaths occurred from 8 AM to 6 PM. The warehouse delivery industry had higher work-related deaths from 10 PM to 8 AM as compared to other industries. Conclusion: In order to increase the efficacy of industrial accident prevention, it is necessary to establish an effective health management system and apply strict safety management activities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.28 no.6
• /
• pp.1-5
• /
• 2013

Notorious press machine bothers employers by causing so many industrial accidents which are mostly of caught-in or between type. In 2008, press machines caused 1665 cases of such type of accidents, which reached about 11% of all those. Even though various approaches has been adopted to prevent those press machine accidents, up to now, no one was found to be satisfactory. In this study, two kinds of companies, accident-occurred and accident-free by press machine, were surveyed to find out positive and negative factors for accidents prevention. 400 companies which experienced accidents in 2008 and 200 companies which did not experience accident at all during the same period were selected for this survey. Most of these companies are small companies that employ less than 50 employees. Even though small companies are exempted from legal obligations to have a safety management system for accident prevention, we surveyed about safety management systems of those companies because of its crucial importance for accident prevention including whether they appointed safety managers and various supervisors. Awareness and efforts for safety of employers and employees were also measured. Results were analysed by the method of cross tabulation analysis. Main findings of this study are as follows. Most accident-occurred companies did not appoint any safety manager or supervisor. While it is recommended that the workplace of high accident rate have a safety manager. In addition, as less employers' effort for safety was made in accident-occurred companies in order to prevent accidents during press processing, the author proposes an amendment to the relevant law. Finally, the most referred reason for the negligence of hazard is the cumbersomeness in installing safeguards.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.3-13
• /
• 2013

The converted accident rates that included in Pre-Qualification (PQ) are to evaluate the results of accidents which have occurred. Therefore, it is demanded the development of proactive evaluation contents to evaluate the safety management activities and efforts on construction companies. The purpose of this study is to provide basic data for the establishment of proactive evaluation contents at public construction project in Korea through the collected and analyzed the PQ documentation applied by public agencies in Los Angeles, USA. The results indicated that diverse reactive safety evaluations are implemented to examine accidents which occurred in past projects such as occupational health insurance, regulation violation. And also, when the accidents occurred, it is evaluated the proactive safety management actions such as safety education, accident prevention programs, and safety management plans are reflected on the evaluation. Thus, if proactive safety related evaluation contents are established and reflected in PQ examinations together with diverse existing reactive safety evaluations considering converted accident rates, not only the existing function of converted accident rates can be reinforced but also businesses' active safety management activities can be induced and decreases in the construction industry's accident rate can be expected.

• Journal of East-West Nursing Research
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.61-68
• /
• 2015

Purpose: This study was conducted to analyze the annual trends and characteristics of work-related mental disorders including suicide among Korean workers. Methods: Employing the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance (IACI) data collected by the Korea Worker's Compensation & Welfare Service, we analyzed total work-related mental disorders and suicide cases (n=455) claimed to IACI from 2008 to 2012. We paid a special attention to workers' socioeconomic status and occupational characteristics. Results: The number of injured workers and industrial accident rate decreased during the study period, whereas the case of work-related mental disorders showed significant increase. Mental disorders cases were more prevalent in workers who were male, aged the 40s, and engaged in finance, as well as with 1-5 years of working duration than their respective counterparts. Increasing trend of suicide cases was statistically significant by the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test (p=.002). Conclusion: This study suggests that work-related mental disorder management strategy and system should be established.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.134-145
• /
• 2015

Objectives: An objective of this study was to perform a risk assessment and social cost-benefit analysis for revising permissible exposure limits for seven substances: Nickel(Insoluble inorganic compounds), benzene, carbon disulfide, formaldehyde, cadmium(as compounds), trichloroethylene, touluene-2,4-diisocyanate. Materials and Methods: The research methods were divided into risk and hazard assessment and cost-benefit analysis. The risk and hazard assessment for the seven substances consists of four steps: An overview of GHS MSDS(1st), review of document of ACGIH's TLVs (2nd), comparison between international occupational exposure limits and domestic permissible exposure limits(3rd), and analysis of excess workplace and excess rate for occupational exposure limits based on previous work environment measurement data(4th). Total cost was estimated using cost of local exhaust ventilation, number of excess workplace and penalties for exceeding a permissible exposure limit. On the other hand, total benefit was calculated using the reduction rate of occupational disease, number of workplaces treating each substance and industrial accident compensation. Finally, the net benefit was calculated by subtracting total cost from total benefit. Results: All the substances investigated in this study were classified by CMR(Carcinogens, Mutagens or Reproductive toxicants) and their international occupational exposure limits were stricter than the domestic permissible exposure limits. As a result of excess rate analysis, trichloroethylene was the highest at 11%, whereas nickel was the lowest at 0.5%. The excess rates of all substances except for trichloroethylene were observed at less than 10%. Among the seven substances, the total cost was highest for trichloroethylene and lowest for carbon disulfide. The benefits for the seven substances were higher than costs estimated based on strengthening current permissible exposure limits. Thus, revising the permissible exposure limits of the seven substances was determined to be acceptable from a social perspective. Conclusions: The final revised permissible exposure limits suggested for the seven substances are as follows: $0.2mg/m^3$ for nickel, 0.5 ppm(TWA) and 2.5 ppm(STEL) for benzene, 1 ppm(TWA) for carbon disulfide, $0.01mg/m^3$(TWA) for cadmium, 10 ppm(TWA) and 25 ppm(STEL) for trichloroethylene, 0.3 ppm(TWA) for formaldehyde, and 0.005 ppm(TWA) and 0.02 ppm(STEL) for toluene diisocynate(isomers).

• Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
• /
• v.35
• /
• pp.10.1-10.10
• /
• 2023

The purpose of this paper was to review the problems relating to Korea's occupational health services and suggest ways to improve them. Korea can be classified as a welfare state type of conservative corporatism partially interwoven with liberalism. While experiencing compressed economic growth, the economic sectors of developed (excess areas) and developing (deficient areas) countries are interwoven. Therefore, it is necessary to perfect conservative corporatism along with a complementary reinforcement of liberal contents and to apply a multilayered approach focusing on complementing the deficient areas. It is essential to form a national representative indicator related to occupational health, and a strategy for selection and concentration is needed. The proposed central indicator is the occupational health coverage rate (OHCR), which is the number of workers who have applied for mandatory occupational health services under the Occupational Safety and Health Act in the numerator with the total working population in the denominator. This paper proposes ways to raise the OHCR, which is currently at the level of 25%-40%, to 70%-80%, which is the level of Japan, Germany, and France. To achieve this target, it is necessary to focus on small businesses and vulnerable workers. This is an area of market failure and requires the active input of community-oriented public resources. For access to larger workplaces, the marketability of services should be strengthened and personal intervention using digital health resources should be actively attempted. Taking a national perspective, work environment improvement committees with tripartite (labor, management, and government) participation for improvement of the working environment need to be established at the center and in the regions. Through this, prevention funds linked to industrial accident compensation and prevention could be used efficiently. A national chemical substance management system must be established to monitor the health of workers and the general public.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.13-19
• /
• 2010

Risk level for each construction work can be very important factors to establish advanced prevention measures. But it is important how to produce it. There are three different methods to set it up for construction situation. They are as follows; 1) occurrence frequency = the number of accident workers of each work kind / yearly accident workers 2) occurrence frequency = the number of accident workers of each work kind / yearly workers 3) occurrence frequency = the number of accident workers of each work kind / the total workers All these three concepts(=averaged concept)are analyzed. Additionally frequency based on discrete curve, and severity based on continuous curve are also combined for producing risk level with more scientific approach. This risk level can be very useful to make prevention plan or take measures at construction sites. This is study result can change existing risk level concept to new concept of it, namely rail way work and in-water work showed be high risk level and RC work be low risk level, different from the situation which we have thought commonly, so far.

• Physical Therapy Korea
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.98-104
• /
• 2005

This study was done to research the general information, causes of stroke, risk factors, complications during admission of geriatric CVA inpatients. We retrospectively studied 208 above 65 years old geriatric CVA inpatients treated in Ajou university hospital from 1994 to 2003 by medical record. These were divided into two groups by following years. We were gathered information about sex, onset age, cause of stroke, number of stroke, complications, housing, family, insurance, smoking, alcohol. Most of incidence of the stroke was noted in the group of young old age (65~74 years old) and old age (75~84 years old). The occurrence rate of male stroke (38.5%) was less than of female stroke (61.5%) and the ratio of male to female was 1:1.6. The occurrence rate of ischemic stroke (72.6%) was higher than of hemorrhagic stroke. The occurrence rate of ischemic stroke increased more and more at the late stage. The most common risk factors for stroke was hypertension and complications during hospitalization were neurogenic bowl and bladder. These results of epidemiologic study may help above 65 years old geriatric CVA early treatment and prevention, rehabilitation and use basic data for multiple prospective study using stroke registry.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.211-216
• /
• 2010

Fire service personnel and ambulance paramedics suffer musculoskeletal disorders as they lift and carry patients while performing Emergency Medical Services (EMS). The objective of the current study was performed to examine the association between working environment and musculoskeletal disorders of 119 paramedics and to analysis the EMS activities for them through basic survey (including task characteristics, risk factors, symptoms and illnesses). Observational job analysis of EMS activities indicated the squatting posture during first-aid performed on floor and the abrupt use of force during carrying heavy load including stretcher with patients on as hazard factors, and excessive low back twisting and bending during stairway transfer was observed. In addition, work-physiological assessment revealed various but rather high lumbar muscle usage rate among the study subjects, being 14.6~32.8% compared with Maximum Voluntary Contraction (MVC) during patients transfer work. Resting heart rate showed 65/min, on the other hand, heart rate on mobilization indicated maximum 124~156/min. Therefore, the results of analysis to the EMS activities, rescuer activities and medical tasks were accompanied with high possibility of accident and musculoskeletal disorders. Also, EMS activities indicated high muscle fatigue and energy consumption, and accumulated muscle fatigue with during continued work.