• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2013

Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the health risk of workers exposed to butyl glycidyl ether to prevent them from developing occupational diseases. Methods: The workplaces that coat floor with epoxy were selected and the samples were collected and analyzed with NIOSH 1616 Method. We calculate workplace reference concentration using with NOAEL estimated by the study of Anderson et al. in 1978. Risk was calculated by the ratio of exposure to workplace reference concentration. Monte-Carlo simulation was performed to derivate the median, cumulative 90%, and cumulative 95% value by using Crystal Ball. Results: Butyl glycidyl ether is a skin, eye irritator and can result in central nervous system depression, allergic reaction. NOAEL was 38 ppm and workplace reference concentration was calculated as 0.73 ppm corrected with uncertainty factors. Geometric mean was 1.152 ppm and geometric standard deviation was 1.522 by the workplace environment measurement. The median, cumulative 90%, and cumulative 95% value of risk were calculated as 1.617, 1.934, and 2.092, respectively. Conclusions: Not only cumulative 90% and cumulative 95% value but also the median of risk is higher than 1.0 by the risk characterization, so it can do a lot of harm to workers. Therefore, the process of derivating workplace reference concentration and the appropriacy of the uncertainty factors should be re-examined.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2000

Objectives : This study was undertaken to evaluate correlation between the levels of hippuric acid in blood plasma (HAP) and those of toluene concentration in the workplace air. Methods : Study subjects were composed of two groups; 21 workers who were occupationally exposed to toluene and 25 rural-area residents who were not exposed to any known occupational toluene source, as an exposed group and a reference group, respectively. Mean age and work duration of the exposed was 42 years and five years, respectively. Mean age of the reference was 42 years. To determine toluene concentrations in the workplace air, air sampling has been conducted for more than six hours using a personal sampler, and analyzed by a gas chromatography-flame ionization detector. Concentrations of hippuric acid in biological samples were determined by a high performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detector. Results : Geometric mean(geometric standard deviation) of HAP and hippuric acid in urine(HAU) for the exposed was 1.39(2.21) mg/L and 2.77(1.46) g/L, respectively, which were significantly different from those of the reference [HAP, 9.45(2.94); HAU, 0.37(0.45)]. Teluene concentration in the workplace air was 86.92(range: $45.18\sim151.23$)ppm. The level of HAP or HAU was significantly correlated (r=0.70 and r=0.63, respectively) with that of toluene in the workplace air. The estimated regression equation was logHAP(mg/L)=-3.60+1.93 log(toluene, ppm) or logHAU(g/L)=-0.85+0.67 log(toluene, ppm). The magnitude of correlation was further enhanced when analyzing relationship between toluene concentrations lower than 100 ppm and its corresponding HAP levels. Conclusion : Overall, plasma hippuric acid levels were well correlated with toluene concentrations in the workplace air, and a statistically significant correlation was observed for the samples with toluene concentration lower than 100 ppm.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.91-99
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• 2012

Airborne chlorpyrifos concentrations in formulation workplaces have not been determined in Korea. The aim of the study was to evaluate chlorpyrifos concentrations of air in a formulation workplace and recognize the RBC cholinesterase activities for the formulation workers. 30 air samples (personal or area sampling) were collected and bood samples from 10 workers were collected for RBC chlorinesterase (RBC AChE) activity in a factory on May 2008. Air samples were collected by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) method and were analyzed by GC-MS. Airborne chlorpyrifos concentrations ranged from 0.003 to $12.90mg/m^3$ and geometric mean (GM) was $0.15\;mg/m^3.$ Compared to Korean Occupational Exposure Limit (KOEL) of 0.1 (2011) or $0.2\;mg/m^3$ (2008), at 95% confidence, airborne concentrations exceeded the KOEL 69.7% or 56.1% of the time or less, indicating that this concentration level was unacceptable according to exposure assessment using a LogNorm2$^{(R)}$. Since the workers were continually at work on the organophosphate or carbamate pesticides formulation, individual baseline for RBC AChE activity was not determined. As the results of comparison with reference average value of RBC AChE activity, it was found that a worker was below 70% RBC AChE activity and five workers were abnormal.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.35-43
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• 2016

The past five years, industrial accidents due to food processing machinery have been occurred 725 cases, injury by the food cutter occurred 390 cases in its. On this study, to prevent food cutter injury, an attempt is made to present the improved documentation of fundamental safety of the food cutter workplace through the injury analysis of food cutter injury and surveys on band saw machine business field. Analyzing the result of 390 cases on food cutter injury, amputation, cut, puncture occupied 75.1 percent (293 cases), compressed occupied 23.3% (91 cases), also it showed constant component without reference to gender, age, scale of work place, service period. In the survey, lack of concentration for workers have been pointed out as the biggest factor in the cause of band saw machine injury. Meanwhile, such as the EU and Japan, whereas presents safety standards about band saw machines that are tailored to each country, on the other hand, South Korea doesn't provide the standards. To prevent the food cutter injury, safety standards need to be established in consideration of amputation, cut, puncture, compressed injury and financial support is required to procure protective equipment at each place of business.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.113-132
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• 2016

Positioning technique which has been widely used for making marketing strategy by analyzing customer's image also has been used for public and test-taker's image analysis about public facilities, entrepreneurs, universities. This study analyze image of library and Information science students who trying to find a job in library fields about diverse types of library and information centers by Positioning technique. As a result of Similarity cognition analysis by multidimensional Scaling and K-means clustering, it was found that students recognize that public, national, university, school library are similar, on the other hand, portal company and special library are different from those types. In the jobs, user service jobs and technical service jobs are recognized as separated clusters, and cultural program job is also recognized dissimilarly from those clusters. By the way, images about work satisfaction and stability of employment shows high in national library; high wage shows high in portal company; employee's growth potential shows high in special library; job importance shows high in reference service jobs; difficulty shows high in content's job. Anyway, in the workplace selection, almost students regard stability of employment as top priorities, accordingly they prefers public library at most. Such a preference concentration tendency is strongly appeared in local university students than in metropolitan area students as a result of Pearson's chi-square test.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.51-60
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• 2018

Objectives: Currently, there is only limited knowledge regarding the hazard of low-level exposure to CMR materials in workplaces. To overcome this limitation, a reference concentration for workers($RfC_w$) from among the risk assessment tools proposed by the US EPA is widely used to set a provisional workplace exposure level(PWEL) for CMR materials for which there are no established Korea Occupational Exposure Limits(KOELs) or subjective chemicals for work environment measurements as regulated by Korea Ministry of Employment and Labor(KMOEL). A simple European calculator of derived no effect level(SECO-DNEL) as proposed by REACH can also be used in place of $RfC_w$ to set the PWEL for chemicals. This study was performed to test the acceptability of using SECO-DNEL as an alternative to $RfC_w$ when setting a PWEL for low-level exposures. Methods: The $RfC_w$ and DNEL for the five CMR materials of dinitrogen oxide, catechol, 2-phenoxy ethanol, carbitol, and carbon black were calculated using the dose-response assessments of the US EPA for $RfC_w$ and REACH guidance for SECO-DNEL, respectively. They were compared using paired t-tests to determine the statistical differences between them. Results: For the five chemicals, the $RfC_w$ were 2.53 ppm, 0.10 ppm, 1.73 ppm, 1.66 ppm, and $0.05mg/m^3$, respectively, while the SECO-DNEL were 2.01 ppm, 0.11 ppm, 1.83 ppm, 1.77 ppm, $0.14mg/m^3$, respectively. There was no statistically significant difference between $RfC_w$ and SECO-DNEL. Conclusions: This study suggests that the SECO-DNEL could be applied in place of $RfC_w$ to set a PWEL for low-level exposure to chemicals, especially CMR materials. To further ensure the reliability of SECO-DNEL as an alternative tool, more chemicals should be applied for calculation and comparison with $RfC_w$.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.127-136
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• 1994

Diffusional sampling devices offer many advantages for measuring concentration levels of industrial contaminants than the conventional pump and charcoal tubes because they are lightweight, require no power, pump or tubing. This study designed to evaluate and compare the sampling performance of passive sampler to charcoal tube from mixed organic solvent workplace with 181 organic solvent using workers working in different concentration of organic solvents. All study workers kept both devices in their breathing zone simultaneuosly in the workplaces, and the sampling analytical results were compared with those of charcoal tube. The results obtained are as follows: 1. The concentrations of toluene and xylene measured by passive sampler were slightly higher than those of charcoal tube, but there were no significant statistical differences between two methods. 2. The concentrations of MEK and cyclo-hexanone measured by passive sampler in low exposure workplace (below 0.20 of MEK TLV levels and 0.1 of cyclo-hexanone TLV levels) were about 2 times higher than that of charcoal tube sampling. While, absorption efficiency of passive sampler was reduced according to increasing concentration measurements of MEK and cyclo-hexanone in air. 3. The ratios of concentrations of toluene, xylene, MEK and cyc1o-hexanone measured by passive sampler over those measured by charcoal tube were 1.11, 1.07, 1.63 and 3.65 respectively. 4. The percentages of concentration of passive samplers within 0.75 and 1.25 of charcoal tube value as a reference value of 1.0 were 57% in toluene, 74% in xylene, 34% in MEK and 32% in cyclo-hexanone respectively. 5. The correlation coefficients of toluene, xylene, MEK and cyclo-hexanone between passive sampler and charcoal tube sampler were 0.963, 0.957, 0.943 and 0.562 with statistical significance.