• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• 제11권2호
• /
• pp.193-198
• /
• 2020

Background: Medical laboratory workers are frequently exposed to a wide range of chemicals. This exposure can have adverse effects on their health. Furthermore, a knowledge lack of the chemical risk increases the likelihood of exposure. The chemical risk assessment reduces the risk of exposure to hazardous chemicals and therefore, guarantees health and safety of the workers. Method: The chemical risk assessment was conducted using a modified INRS method, according to the new CLP Regulation, of 11 unit laboratories in a Moroccan medical laboratory. Observation of each workstation and analysis of safety data sheets are key tools in this study. Results: A total of 144 substances and reagents that could affect the health of the analytical technicians were identified. Among these products, 17% are concerned by the low priority risk score, with 55% concerned by the average priority risk score and 28% concerned by the high priority risk score. This study also enabled to better identify the chemical agents that have restrictive occupational exposure limit value and controls were conducted to this effect. On the basis of the results obtained, several corrective and preventive measures have been proposed and implemented. Conclusion: Risk assessment is essential to ensure the health and safety of workers and to meet regulatory requirements. It enables to identify all the risky manipulations and to adopt appropriate preventive measures. However, it is not a one-time activity but it must be continuous in order to master the changes and thus ensure the best safety of all.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• 제13권4호
• /
• pp.671-683
• /
• 2017

Groundwater control is a significant issue in most underground construction. An estimate of the inflow rate is required to size the pumping system, and treatment plant facilities for construction planning and cost assessment. An estimate of the excavation-induced drawdown of the initial groundwater level is required to evaluate potential environmental impacts. Analytical and empirical methods used in current engineering practice do not adequately account for the effect of the jointed-rock-mass anisotropy and heterogeneity. The impact of geostructural anisotropy of fractured rocks on tunnel inflows is addressed and the limitations of analytical solutions assuming isotropic hydraulic conductivity are discussed. In this paper the unexcavated Zagros tunnel route has been classified from groundwater flow point of view based on the combination of observed water inflow and numerical modeling results. Results show that, in this hard rock tunnel, flow usually concentrates in some areas, and much of the tunnel is dry. So the remaining unexcavated Zagros tunnel route has been categorized into three categories including high Risk, moderately risk and low risk. Results show that around 60 m of tunnel (3%) length can conduit the large amount of water into tunnel and categorized into high risk zone and about 45% of tunnel route has moderately risk. The reason is that, in this tunnel, most of the water flows in rock fractures and fractures typically occur in a clustered pattern rather than in a regular or random pattern.

• 대한예방한의학회지
• /
• 제22권3호
• /
• pp.11-19
• /
• 2018

Objectives : The aim of this study is to investigate the current research trend of herbal medicine based on the published articles in pharmacoepidemiologic journals. Methods : A total of 3 electronic journals, Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety(PDS), Drug Safety and Journal of Pharmacoepidemiology and Risk Management(JPERM) from January 2013 to August 2018 were used for searching articles about herbal medicine. Selected articles were reviewed and classified under 5 categories-collection of adverse events in herbal medicine, statistical modeling and methodology, pharmaco-epidemiologic outcome study, drug utilization review(DUR), risk management system and regulation. Results : A total of 8 articles were finally included for analysis. 2 articles were categorized in collection of adverse events in herbal medicine, 1 was statistical modeling and methodology, 2 were pharmacoepidemiologic outcome study and 3 were risk management system and regulation. There was no article in DUR. And then pharmacoepidemiologic research trends of herbal medicine were summarized in classification of 5 categories. Conclusions : To sum up with these 8 articles of herbal medicine in pharmacoepidemiologic journals, herbal medicine was of interesting concern among researchers. The need for research on safety and risk management of herbal medicine is steadily increasing, pharmacoepidemiologic research about herbal medicine must be activated in Korea.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제56권1호
• /
• pp.141-146
• /
• 2024

Station blackout (SBO) risk is one of the most significant contributors to nuclear power plant risk. In this paper, the sequence probability formulas derived by the convolution approach are compared with those derived by the conventional event tree/fault tree (ET/FT) approach for the SBO situation in which emergency diesel generators fail to start. The comparison identifies what makes the ET/FT approach more conservative and raises the issue regarding the mission time of a turbine-driven auxiliary feedwater pump (TDP), which suggests a possible modeling improvement in the ET/FT approach. Monte Carlo simulations with up-to-date component reliability data validate the convolution approach. The sequence probability of an alternative alternating current diesel generator (AAC DG) failing to start and the TDP failing to operate owing to battery depletion contributes most to the SBO risk. The probability overestimation of the scenario in which the AAC DG fails to run and the TDP fails to operate owing to battery depletion contributes most to the SBO risk overestimation determined by the ET/FT approach. The modification of the TDP mission time renders the sequence probabilities determined by the ET/FT approach more consistent with those determined by the convolution approach.

• 한국안전학회지
• /
• 제14권4호
• /
• pp.120-125
• /
• 1999

This study evaluated the effect of the accidents caused by fire, explosion, and toxic gas release by using SuperChems, quantitative hazardous material release modeling software, which estimates the potential area of damage. According to the loss severity, the appropriate risk management principles can be applied. Risk management is divided into the two methods which are risk control and risk financing. Risk control includes risk avoidance, risk spreading and diversification, and risk reduction. Risk financing includes risk retention and risk transfer. The results of this study can help the related company determine the appropriate reserve fund and the amount to be insured against the third party losses according to the estimated loss severity.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
• /
• 제1권2호
• /
• pp.37-42
• /
• 2011

The key role in safety management is to identify any possible hazard before it occurs by identifying any possible risk factors which are critical to risk assessment. It is well known that falsework (temporary facilities) in construction projects is fundamentally important. This planning/assessment process is considered to be tedious and requires a lot of attention due to the following reasons: firstly, the installation and dismantling of those facilities are one of the high risk activities in the job sites. Secondly, temporary facilities are generally not clearly delineated on the building drawings. Therefore, it is our strong belief that safety tools have to be simple and convenient enough for the jobsite people to manage them easily and be flexible for any occasions to be occurred at various degrees. In order to develop a safety identification system of temporary facilities, this research utilizes the BIM technology in retrieving important information by importing data from BIM models and use it in the safety planning stage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제54권7호
• /
• pp.2453-2466
• /
• 2022

Nuclear power plant operators in the main control room are exposed to stressful conditions in emergency situations as immediate and appropriate mitigations are required. While emergency operating procedures (EOPs) provide operators with the appropriate tasks and diagnostic guidelines, EOPs have static properties that make it difficult to reflect the dynamic changes of the plant. Due to this static nature, operator workloads increase because unrelated information must be screened out and numerous displays must be checked to obtain the plant status. Generally, excessive workloads should be reduced because they can lead to human errors that may adversely affect nuclear power plant safety. This paper presents a framework for an operator support system that can substitute the initial responses of the EOPs, or in other words the immediate actions and diagnostic procedures, in the early stages of an emergency. The system assists operators in emergency operations as follows: performing the monitoring tasks in parallel, identifying current risk and latent risk causality, diagnosing the accident, and displaying all information intuitively with a master logic diagram. The risk causalities are analyzed with a functional modeling methodology called multilevel flow modeling. This system is expected to reduce workloads and the time for performing initial emergency response procedures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• 제55권1호
• /
• pp.119-130
• /
• 2023

Among the various elements of probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), human failure events (HFEs) and their dependencies are major contributors to the quantification of risk of a nuclear power plant. Currently, the dependency among HFEs is reflected using a post-processing method in PSA, wherein several drawbacks, such as limited propagation of minimal cutsets through the fault tree and improper truncation of minimal cutsets exist. In this paper, we propose a method to model the HFE dependency directly in a fault tree using the if-then-else logic. The proposed method proved to be equivalent to the conventional post-processing method while addressing the drawbacks of the latter. We also developed a software tool to facilitate the implementation of the proposed method considering the need for modeling the dependency between multiple HFEs. We applied the proposed method to a specific case to demonstrate the drawbacks of the conventional post-processing method and the advantages of the proposed method. When applied appropriately under specific conditions, the direct fault-tree modeling of HFE dependency enhances the accuracy of the risk quantification and facilitates the analysis of minimal cutsets.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• 제15권2호
• /
• pp.867-870
• /
• 2014

Purpose: This study used receiver operating characteristic curve to analyze Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) ependymoma data to identify predictive models and potential disparity in outcome. Materials and Methods: This study analyzed socio-economic, staging and treatment factors available in the SEER database for ependymoma. For the risk modeling, each factor was fitted by a Generalized Linear Model to predict the outcome ('brain and other nervous systems' specific death in yes/no). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was computed. Similar strata were combined to construct the most parsimonious models. A random sampling algorithm was used to estimate the modeling errors. Risk of ependymoma death was computed for the predictors for comparison. Results: A total of 3,500 patients diagnosed from 1973 to 2009 were included in this study. The mean follow up time (S.D.) was 79.8 (82.3) months. Some 46% of the patients were female. The mean (S.D.) age was 34.4 (22.8) years. Age was the most predictive factor of outcome. Unknown grade demonstrated a 15% risk of cause specific death compared to 9% for grades I and II, and 36% for grades III and IV. A 5-tiered grade model (with a ROC area 0.48) was optimized to a 3-tiered model (with ROC area of 0.53). This ROC area tied for the second with that for surgery. African-American patients had 21.5% risk of death compared with 16.6% for the others. Some 72.7% of patient who did not get RT had cerebellar or spinal ependymoma. Patients undergoing surgery had 16.3% risk of death, as compared to 23.7% among those who did not have surgery. Conclusion: Grading ependymoma may dramatically improve modeling of data. RT is under used for cerebellum and spinal cord ependymoma and it may be a potential way to improve outcome.

• 아동학회지
• /
• 제31권3호
• /
• pp.83-97
• /
• 2010

Growth mixture modeling was used to identify types of changes in overt aggression from Grades 4 to 7 among a sample from the Korean Youth Panel Survey. Three discrete patterns were found to adequately explain changes of overt aggression in both boys and girls : Persistent intermediate aggression; Increasing aggression; and Decreasing aggression. Most boys (93%) fell into the Persistent intermediate aggression group and 49% of girls were found to fall into the Increasing aggression group. This suggests that prevention programs should recognize that girls are at risk of increasing aggression in their early adolescence. Multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that self-control, child abuse, peer support, and involvement with deviant peers at Grades 4 were all strongly associated with trajectory class membership. These associations did not differ by gender. These findings suggest that prevention programs should focus on the multiple risk factors of both boys and girls.