• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2016

Background: Construction painters have not been studied well in terms of their hazards exposure. The objective of this study was to evaluate the exposure levels of total volatile organic compounds (TVOCs) for painters in the construction industry. Methods: Activity-specific personal air samplings were carried out in three waterproofing activities [polyurethane (PU), asphalt, and cement mortar] and three painting activities (epoxy, oil based, and water based) by using organic-vapor-monitor passive-sampling devices. Gas chromatograph with flame ionization detector could be used for identifying and quantifying individual organic chemicals. The levels of TVOCs, by summing up 15 targeted substances, were expressed in exposure-index (EI) values. Results: As arithmetic means in the order of concentration levels, the EIs of TVOCs in waterproofing works were 10.77, 2.42, 1.78, 1.68, 0.47, 0.07, and none detected (ND) for indoor PU-primer task, outdoor PU-primer task, outdoor PU-resin task, indoor PU-resin task, asphalt-primer task, asphalt-adhesive task, and cement-mortar task, respectively. The highest EI for painting works was 5.61 for indoor epoxyprimer task, followed by indoor epoxy-resin task (2.03), outdoor oil-based-spray-paint task (1.65), outdoor water-based-paint task (0.66), and indoor oil-based-paint task (0.15). Assuming that the operations were carried out continuously for 8 hours without breaks and by using the arithmetic means of EIs for each of the 12 tasks in this study, 58.3% (7 out of 12) exceeded the exposure limit of 100% (EI > 1.0), while 8.3% (1 out of 12) was in 50e100% of exposure limit (0.5 > EI > 1.0), and 4 tasks out of 12 were located in less than 50% of the limit range (EI < 0.5). Conclusion: From this study, we recognized that construction painters are exposed to various solvents, including carcinogens and reproductive toxins, and the levels of TVOC concentration in many of the painting tasks exceeded the exposure limits. Construction workers need to be protected from chemical agents during their painting works by using personal protective devices and/or work practice measures. Additional studies should focus on the exposure assessment of other hazards for construction workers, in order to identify high-risk tasks and to improve hazardous work environments.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1874-1879
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• 2024

Owing to strict radiation safety management in Korean nuclear power plants (NPPs), most radiation workers receive very low radiation doses, even lower than the annual dose limit for the general public. However, the occupational dose distribution indicates that some Korean NPP workers receive a relatively higher dose than the average dose. This inequity in radiation exposure could be reduced by providing customized radiation protection measures, such as dose constraints, to workers receiving relatively higher doses. In this study, dose normalization was performed to identify the highest radiation exposure work in Korean pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The results show that most of the occupational exposure in Korean PWRs occurs during the planned maintenance period. Finally, the three highest radiation exposure tasks in Korean PWRs were identified: nozzle dam installation and removal, eddy current testing, and man-way opening and closing.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.27-35
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• 2005

This study was carried out to evaluate the characteristics of petroleum refinery workers' exposure to organic solvents. Exposure assessment was conducted by full shift-based long term personal sampling(TWA-P) and task-based short term personal sampling(STEL-P) strategy. Major organic solvents that workers can be exposed are various, varying from C3~C12, and this study focused on 11 kinds including benzene, considering toxicity and concentration level. In comparison with two sampling results, STEL-P shows a significant(p<0.001) excess of exposure level rather than TWA-P. As the potential risk index for benzene is calculated as 16, benzene should be set the highest priority for control in petroleum refinery industry. The tasks with the highest benzene exposure level were de-watering(AM;99.8 ppm), draining(AM;19.6ppm), sampling(AM;16.2ppm), and manual gauging(AM;15.02ppm). Petroleum refinery workers' exposure pattern to organic solvents differs by tasks performed, and some task has a high risk of temporary extreme exposure. Therefore, traditional 8-hour TWA sampling strategy have possibility of underestimation of exposure level of workers in petroleum refinery.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.165-169
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• 2009

Two dosimeters are provided to radiation workers participating in tasks where high radiation exposure is expected during maintenance at nuclear power plants. At Korean nuclear power plants, two dosimeters are currently provided for tasks where exposure rates exceed 1 mSv/hr, the difference of equivalent dose to specific parts of the body is more than 30% and an exposure of more than 2 mSv is expected in a single task. These conditions for the provisioning of two dosimeters are based on previous field test results, and it is recommended that the dosimeters be worn on the chest and back. It was also found that the workers felt it was more convenient when they wore two dosimeters on chest and back rather than on chest and head. After the application of previous field test results to practice, it was found that the calculated effective dose for workers during radiation work was lower than the maximum dose of chest or back dosimeter by approximately 10%-30%. This performance is regarded not only to meet the international guideline but also to provide convenience for workers during radiation work.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.27-31
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• 2004

Some of the petroleum products contain benzene which is well known as a confirmed human carcinogen. For example, gasoline products contain benzene ranging up to several percents by weight. High exposures to the benzene and other organic solvents would be likely to occur during intermittent tasks and or processes rather than continuous jobs such as sampling, repair, inspection, and loading/unloading jobs. The work time for these jobs is various. However, most of work time is very short and the representative time interval is 15 minutes. Thus, it is preferable to do exposure assessment for 15 minute time weighted average which is known as a short time exposure level(STEL) by ACGIH rather than for 8-hours TWA. It is particularly significant to the exposure monitoring for benzene since it has been known that the exposure rate plays an important role to provoke the leukemia. Due to the large variations, a number of processes/tasks, the traditional sampling technique for organic solvents with the use of the charcoal and sampling pumps is not appropriate. Limited number of samples can be obtained due to the shortage of sampling pumps. Passive samplers can eliminate these limitations. However, low sampling rates resulted in collection of small amount of the target analysts in the passive samplers. This is originated the nature of passive samplers. Field applications were made with use of passive samplers to compare with the charcoal tube methods for 15 minutes. Gasoline loading processes to the tank lorry trucks at the loading stations in the petroleum products storage area. Good agreements between the results of passive samplers and those of the charcoal tubes were achieved. However, it was found that special cautions were necessary during the analysis at very low concentration levels.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.803-811
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• 2021

In this study, the exposure amount of IASCC test worker was evaluated by applying the process simulation technology. Using DELMIA Version 5, a commercial process simulation code, IASCC test facility, hot cells, and workers were prepared, and IASCC test activities were implemented, and the cumulative exposure of workers passing through the dose-distributed space could be evaluated through user coding. In order to simulate behavior of workers, human manikins with a degree of freedom of 200 or more imitating the human musculoskeletal system were applied. In order to calculate the worker's exposure, the coordinates, start time, and retention period for each posture were extracted by accessing the sub-information of the human manikin task, and the cumulative exposure was calculated by multiplying the spatial dose value by the posture retention time. The spatial dose for the exposure evaluation was calculated using MCNP6 Version 1.0, and the calculated spatial dose was embedded into the process simulation domain. As a result of comparing and analyzing the results of exposure evaluation by process simulation and typical exposure evaluation, the annual exposure to daily test work in the regular entrance was predicted at similar levels, 0.388 mSv/year and 1.334 mSv/year, respectively. Exposure assessment was also performed on special tasks performed in areas with high spatial doses, and tasks with high exposure could be easily identified, and work improvement plans could be derived intuitively through human manikin posture and spatial dose visualization of the tasks.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.122-132
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to present the basic materials of a developmental counterplan by assessing prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms and characteristics of work-related ergonomic risk factors. The prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms of 64 vineyard workers was investigated by using a self-reported questionnaire. And the vineyard workers' tasks were also collected and analyzed during 9-month period by observing and videotaping methods to identify the ergonomic risk factors. The prevalence rate of musculoskeletal symptoms of female(84.4%) was much higher than that of male(62.5%) and a total prevalence rate was 73.4%. There was no different prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms between age over 60 years and under 60 years. The prevalence rates of musculoskeletal complaints for each body part were 48.4%, 42.2%, and 35.9% for the wrist, legs/knee, and shoulder, respectively. In postural risk analysis, 7 works(REBA score) represented the high risk tasks such as delivering harvest boxed(12), picking cluster(11) and so on. The main works(exposure score) were orderly ranked as picking cluster(1590), pruning branch(388), and cluster thinning(327). The risk factors of vineyard work were identified as follows: shoulder flexion(${\geq}45^{\circ}$), wrist Flex./Ext.(${\geq}15^{\circ}$), hand force(power/pinch-grip), and prolonged standing(${\geq}4hr$). The engineering solutions including an improvement of hand tools, working process, and working environment should be applied to the high risky tasks in order to resolve the ergonomic problems. The administrative solutions such as improving a distribution of resting time, an exercise cure, an early recognition of symptoms and rehabilitation might be another solution for reducing musculoskeletal symptoms in vineyard workers.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.477-482
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• 2015

Workers in nuclear medicine have performed various tasks such as production, distribution, preparation and injection of radioisotope. This process could cause high radiation exposure to wokers' hand. The purpose of this study was to investigate shielding effect for r-rays of 140 and 511 keV by using Monte-carlo simulation. As a result, it was effective, regardless of lead thickness for radiation shielding in 140 keV r-ray. However, it was effective in shielding material with thickness of more than only 1.1 mm in 511keV r-ray. And also it doesn't effective in less than 1.1 mm due to secondary scatter ray and exposure dose was rather increased. Consequently, energy of radionuclide and thickness of shielding materials should be considered to reduce radiation exposure.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.06e
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• pp.193-196
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• 2002

In this paper, we presents the remote inspection activity with a mobile robot at the calandria face areas of the PHWR (pressurized heavy water reactor) nuclear power plants during full power plant operation.. The tele-operated mobile robot has been developed for this task. A 4 wheeled mechanism with the dual reconfigurable crawler arm has been adopted for the ease access to the high radiation area of calandria face. A specially designed extendable long reach mast attached on the mobile platform and the thermal image monitoring system enable human eyes to look into the calandria face. Application of robot will keep human workers from high radiation exposure and enhance the reliability of nuclear power plants.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.9-14
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• 2020

A special purpose machine with two manipulators and quadruped crawler system is being developed to work at disaster sites where it is intended to quickly respond in the initial stages after the event. In this study, a terrain recognition module is developed so that the above special purpose machine can quickly obtain ground information to help choose its path while recognizing objects in its way, this is intended to enhance the remote driver's limited situational awareness. Terrain recognition modules were developed for two tasks (real-time path guidance, precision terrain measurements). The real-time path guidance analyzes terrain and obstacles while moving, while the precision terrain measurement feature provides more accurate terrain information by precisely measuring the ground in front of the vehicle while stationary. In this study, an air-cooled sensor protection module was developed so that the terrain recognition module can continue its vital tasks in the event of exposure to foreign substances, including scattered dust, mist and rainfall, as well as high temperatures.