• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.261-267
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• 2021

Background: The series of serious industrial accidents in recent years at contractors to large companies has highlighted risk outsourcing as a real and urgent problem. This study aims to review the difference in the degree of risk exposure and the occurrence of industrial accidents depending on the type of company relations. Among in-house contractors, the focus will be on those handling hazardous chemicals that include companies for which outsourcing requires approval. Methods: This study uses the 9th wave of the Industrial Safety and Health Survey (2018). For determining the degree of risk exposure, the occurrence of industrial accidents, and industrial accident rate, multivariate, logistic, and fractional logit, regression analyses were used, respectively. Results: First, In-house contractors' degree of risk exposure is higher than that of the client companies. In particular, this gap is even greater for companies dealing with chemicals. Second, among only those that handle hazardous chemicals, in-house contractors do show a significantly higher rate of industrial accident occurrence. Third, In-house contractors have a significantly higher rate of industrial accidents from diseases than client companies. Conclusion: The analysis supports the intent of the legal amendment that strengthens the protection of in-house contracted workers who handle hazardous chemicals. Second, the results of this study suggest that safety and health management must go beyond legal compliance and ensure that it has substance and effectiveness. Last, there should be policy consideration is necessary to reduce attempts to hide industrial accidents.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.189-197
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• 2017

Background: Despite the recent efforts to prevent industrial accidents in the Republic of Korea, the industrial accident rate has not improved much. Industrial safety policies and safety management are also known to be inefficient. This study focused on dynamic characteristics of industrial safety systems and their effects on safety performance in the Republic of Korea. Such dynamic characteristics are particularly important for restructuring of the industrial safety system. Methods: The effects of damping and elastic characteristics of the industrial safety system model on safety performance were examined and feedback control performance was explained in view of cost and benefit. The implications on safety policies of restructuring the industrial safety system were also explored. Results: A strong correlation between the safety budget and the industrial accident rate enabled modeling of an industrial safety system with these variables as the input and the output, respectively. A more effective and efficient industrial safety system could be realized by having weaker elastic characteristics and stronger damping characteristics in it. A substantial decrease in total social cost is expected as the industrial safety system is restructured accordingly. Conclusion: A simple feedback control with proportional-integral action is effective in prevention of industrial accidents. Securing a lower level of elastic industrial accident-driving energy appears to have dominant effects on the control performance compared with the damping effort to dissipate such energy. More attention needs to be directed towards physical and social feedbacks that have prolonged cumulative effects. Suggestions for further improvement of the safety system including physical and social feedbacks are also made.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.693-710
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• 2022

Social interest in occupational safety and health is increasing due to ESG management and the implementation of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. This study examines the current status of occupational accidents, which is the safety level of energy companies, and the impact of occupational accidents on the management performance (sales per capita, operating profit per capita, operating margin per capita) of energy companies over the period of 2015 to 2021 was empirically analyzed. As a result of the analysis, the level of occupational accidents in the 157 energy companies to be analyzed was lower than the occupational injury accident rate in Korea, but the disease rate was high.As a result of analyzing the impact of occupational accidents on management performance, it is estimated that an increase in the occupational accident rate reduces per capita sales, per capita operating profit, and gross margin rate.Through this study, the vulnerability of energy companies to occupational accidents was confirmed, and the direct and indirect costs of occupational accidents quantified the negative impact on management performance.Referring to the results of this study, energy companies should strengthen their efforts to prevent occupational accidents by increasing investment in safety and health to protect the lives of valuable workers and create sustainable business performance.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.71-80
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• 2014

The occupational injury and illness(OII) was influenced by the various factors. This study was planned to investigate the pathway of the activities of OSHM on the rate of OII via worker's participation. The survey on the trend of the activities of OSHM was used. The sample size of manufacturing industry was 3,000 enterprises and that of construction was 1,000 enterprises. The survey was done by interview method with structure questionnaire. Questions about the activities of OHSM were integrated into one category using factor analysis. The enterprises with OII has more activities of OSHM than that without OII. Among enterprises with OII, the level of the activities of OSHM was positively correlated with the rate of OII. The activities of OSHM has influenced on the rate of OII directly and indirectly via worker's participation and the activities of prevention of accident. Worker's participation also has the direct effect and indirect effect on the rate of OII. Worker's participation in construction sector has more effect on OII than that in manufacturing sector.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.23-26
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• 2005

In spite of the rapid economic growth in Korea, safety cultures in construction industry have not much improved during last ten years. When it is compared to other developed countries of safety, accident rate of Korean construction sites shows bleak figures. This study compares the safety figures of Korea with the UK figures in order to find out what is needed for the safety of the construction sites in Korea. By comparing occupations, age groups, kind of accident, and agent, this study found several differences and similarities, and derived the directions for better safety management.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.168-174
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• 2010

South Korea's industrial injuries are decreasing overall in the last 32 years. Nevertheless, the fatal occupational injury rate is still higher than in developed countries. This study was conducted to help prevention strategies of occupational injuries for the Republic of Korea. Fatal occupational injury rates were obtained from "Industrial Accident Analysis"of the Korean Ministry of Labor. Poisson regression was used to assess time trends. Socioeconomic indicators were obtained from the Korea Labor Institute and the Statistics Korea. Fatal occupational injury rates were adjusted by year, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between the socio-economic indicators and occupational injuries. In 1975, fatal occupational injury rate was 54.8 per 100,000 workers. With somewhat up and down, it was decreased to 21.0 in 2006. An annual rate of change for the years 1975-2006 was - 1.83%, and for the years 2002-2006 was -5.02%. As economic growth rate, paricipation rate for the age less than 25 and hours of work per week or year increased, fatal occupational injury rate also increased. Conversely, as GDP per capita, paricipation rate or employment rate for female, paricipation rate for the age 25 or more, hourly compensation costs for production workers and services output as percent of GDP increased, fatal occupational injury rate decreased. By the development of safety techniques and the adoption of more legislative constraints, developed economy reduce occupational injuries. Conversely, economic growth may raise occupational injuries. Therefore, prevention strategies are needed to manage both of them. We need to make an effort to prevent occupational injuries due to not only sexual differences, but also job differences between male and female. Preventive strategies are needed to consider the characteristics of younger workers. Addition to wage, other appropriate variables for work condition should be considered together. Extending work hours is need to be regulated with systemic methods.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.107-118
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• 2012

Objectives: This study examines the occurrence of disease resulting from low back pain and factors of working environment meaningfully influencing the occurrence of lumbago as well as analyzes '2nd Korean Working Condition Survey (KWCS)' conducted in 2010 so as to establish the prevention and improvement measures. Methods: The analysis method is that it is to compare the prevalence rate of low back pain according to working environment via odds ratio and to implement the test about the factors having the difference in working environment between low back pain group and normal group through weighted t-test. Results: As a result, it indicates that there is a meaningful difference for prevalence rate of low back pain according to age, status in employment and education level which are socio-demographical factors. The analysis in working hours shows that the period of work is a factor raising the prevalence rate of low back pain rather than weekly working hours. The analysis in the work risk factor indicates that the increase in prevalence rate of low back pain takes place to either workers with repetitive movement and continuously standing posture or those with heavy stress and emotional labour. Conclusions: Workers with low back pain have suffered from accident, depression, anxiety disorder and sleep. The factors in which the prevalence rate of low back pain decrease are to provide information on health and safety and working speed, and enough rest.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 2016

In this study, the current regulations to be adequate in industrial site have to be renew in order to prevent the fatal injuries by mobile cranes. Fatal injury analyses were conducted with several accident cases by the mobile cranes. For each accident, the causes of the injuries were examined and proper safety measures were proposed. This study proposed a revision of the standard guideline as an accident prevention measures through in-depth analysis of fatal accidents. First, fatality rate per 10,000 persons by the mobiles cranes was 0.57 in 2011. Second, the in-depth analysis of the mobile crane accidents showed that the main factors of the accidents were the overturn of mobile crane, the fracture of connection part between mobile crane boom and rope, the breaking of rope and the misunderstanding over the signal between a mobile crane driver and workers around a mobile crane. Third, the order of high defection of connecting parts was bucket bolt, bracket and extension parts. Fourth, since there were several cases of overturn of mobile crane by itself in the in-depth analysis of the mobile crane, the over slop-proof device was proposed as the main alternative in this study. Fifth, the revision of standards of safety factor that shall be more than 10, of connecting parts of mobile crane was proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.145-151
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• 2019

The coastal composite fishery has the highest rate of around 30.0% in registered fishing vessels of Korea for the last three years. The risk analysis for the fisher's safety of coastal composite fishing vessels was conducted to serve as a basic data for improving the healthy and safe working environment of fisher using fisher's occupational accidents of the national federation of fisheries cooperatives (NFFC) from 2016 to 2018 (n = 1,105). As a result, the occupational accident occurrence rate of coastal composite fishery was 3.76% in all industries, 7.8 times the rate of that. In addition, death and missing rate was found to have a serious level management to 10.10‱. Among the accidents, 76.0% occurred at sea. The slipping, others and contact with machinery or fishing gear occurred more frequently in order in the frequency of accident occurrence pattern. In the risk assessment using frequency and severity, slipping, contact with machinery and others showed high risk during fishing. The results are expected to contribute to identification and assessment of safety hazard occurred in coastal composite fishing vessels.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.72-79
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• 2008

This study was surveyed to assess the status of safety accidents occurred in work-places and prepare the fundamental data and prevent the safety accidents. The authors reviewed and analysed the charts of accident cases treated at a primary care clinic in A city from January 1991 to December 2006. The data were classified according to the USA Standards Institute and International Labour Organization method. We analyzed the data using SPSS program. The results were as follows : 1. The total cases of accidents were 455 for 8 years. 2. Accidents were mostly common in the workers who are in thirties and forties age(84.4%). 3. As season variation, spring and summer were common than others, but there was no statistical significance on season, month and weekday. 4. The most frequent injured part of the body were hand and finger, which was 36.0% among total cases. 5. According to the accidents type, cases of caught in, under or between were most frequently observed as 53.9% of the total cases. 6. The most common source of injuries was power machine(50.5%). 7. According to the unsafe acts, cases of carelessness and unsafe information were most frequently observed as 71.2% of the total cases. 8. Admission rate(5.5%) and official report rate(2.2%) were very low rate. As above results, the authors recommend to prepare the systemic control programs on environmental and human factors of safety accidents such as improving the working conditions, working facilities, working methods and safety education, and control of working time for working day.