• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.81-88
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• 2014

A number of screening tools have been developed to evaluate the human balance capability. Many of them were designed to identify the elderly with falling risk. Three different screening tools, which have been well used many clinical fields, were used in this study. The purpose of this study was to evaluate balance capability in facilities maintenance workers in korea. There were no statistical significance between male and female when evaluated with three different screening tools. However, significant differences were found among the age groups irrespective of gender when evaluated with three different screening tools. The results of three different screening tools in korea showed poor values compared with previous results. These results revealed that facilities maintenance workers faced more critical falling risk in korea.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.13 no.21
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• pp.127-132
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• 1990

Industrial accidents and the resulting worker injuries have adverse effect on industry. From a financial perspective, these effects are realized in large sums of money, perhaps 1.5 billions of wons which are spent last year. In the past. industry in general was not aware of the high costs incurred through injuries to workers. However, this trend has changed in recent years. This paper shows that middle managers have a critical job with respect to safety in workers. The safer middle managers have better resulting than unsafe ones. This is because the workers are more efficient and productive when acting safely. Consequently, this study was primarily an attempt to identify the relationship among middle manager behavior, job site policies, and interpersonal relationships on the job as the affect work safety and performance. More specifically this study focused on the investigation of the research questions by testing the hypotheses.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.200-207
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• 2024

Background: Workers are often exposed to hazardous heat due to their work environment, leading to various injuries. As a result of climate change, heat-related injuries (HRIs) are becoming more problematic. This study aims to identify critical contributing factors to the severity of occupational HRIs. Methods: This study analyzed historical injury reports from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Contributing factors to the severity of HRIs were identified using text mining and model-free machine learning methods. The Multinomial Logit Model (MNL) was applied to explore the relationship between impact factors and the severity of HRIs. Results: The results indicated a higher risk of fatal HRIs among middle-aged, older, and male workers, particularly in the construction, service, manufacturing, and agriculture industries. In addition, a higher heat index, collapses, heart attacks, and fall accidents increased the severity of HRIs, while symptoms such as dehydration, dizziness, cramps, faintness, and vomiting reduced the likelihood of fatal HRIs. Conclusions: The severity of HRIs was significantly influenced by factors like workers' age, gender, industry type, heat index , symptoms, and secondary injuries. The findings underscore the need for tailored preventive strategies and training across different worker groups to mitigate HRIs risks.

• Industry Promotion Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.47-60
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to examine the causal relationship between self-efficacy and safety consciousness of health belief factors and how they affect the disaster prevention behavior of construction workers using TBM. To this end, a research model is presented that applies the main variables of the Health Belief Theory, a social psychological health behavior change model developed to predict and explain health-related behaviors. To empirically verify the research model of this study, a survey was conducted among construction workers who have experience in using TBMs for chemical plant construction. The results showed that, first, the perceived severity of construction workers utilizing chemical plant construction has a significant effect on self-efficacy and safety consciousness; second, the perceived probability of construction workers utilizing chemical plant construction has a significant effect on self-efficacy and safety consciousness. Third, the perceived obstacles of construction workers utilizing chemical plant construction have a significant effect on self-efficacy and safety consciousness. Fourth, the perceived benefits of construction workers utilizing chemical plant construction were found to have a significant effect on self-efficacy and safety awareness. The purpose of this study is to reduce critical accidents through disaster prevention behavior of chemical plant construction workers through TBM.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.427-433
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• 2018

Background: The purpose of this study was to identify the influence of workers' perceived workload, accident experiences, supervisors' safety leadership, and an organization's safety climate on the cognitive and emotional risk perception. Methods: Six hundred and twenty employees in a variety of manufacturing organizations were asked to complete to a questionnaire. Among them, a total of 376 employees provided valid data for analysis. To test the hypothesis, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used. Statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS program, version 23. Results: The results indicated that workload and accident experiences have a positive influence and safety leadership and safety climate have a negative influence on the cognitive and emotional risk perception. Workload, safety leadership, and the safety climate influence perceived risk more than accident experience, especially for the emotional risk perception. Conclusion: These results indicated that multilevel factors (organization, group, and individual) play a critical role in predicting individual risk perceptions. Based on these results, therefore, to reduce risk perception related with unsafe behaviors and accidents, organizations need to conduct a variety of safety programs that enhance their safety climate beyond simple safety-related education and training. Simultaneously, it needs to seek ways to promote supervisors' safety leadership behaviors (e.g., site visits, feedback, safety communication, etc.). In addition, it is necessary to adjust work speed and amount and allocate task considering employees' skill and ability to reduce the workload for reducing risk perception.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.282-292
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• 2008

This study was conducted to evaluate work environment monitoring program(WMP) under Industrial Safety and Health Act in Korea. WMP was evaluated by focusing on five key elements, such as purpose, subject, scope, method and workers' participation. The operation status of WMP was evaluated by using questionnaire to workers and data published by Ministry of Labor(MOL). Compliance rate of WMP was less 13 % in manufacturing workplaces. Over-exposure rate was steady state by annual trend. The degree of workers' satisfaction to WMP was just 24 %. A critical problem with the current WMP is that the employer and workers are not acting as main players. For a fundamental improvement in working condition to take place, participation of workers should be expanded and be guaranteed by law.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.101-108
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• 2018

Background: Work and work environment have a critical influence on adolescent workers' health. They are subjected to more risks than adults. The aim of this study is to examine psychological health outcomes in adolescent workers in the areas of depression, somatization, anxiety, hostility, and negative self-concept, and to investigate any related factors. Methods: This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study. Research samples were collected from adolescent workers between 15 and 18 years old attending a 1-day mandatory education course at vocational training centers, working 5 days per week in small enterprises. Data were collected using the following instruments: Brief Symptom Inventory, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and Descriptive Characteristics of Children's Assessment Form. Results: The investigation covers 837 young workers, of whom 675 were males and 162 were females. The majority of the families had low incomes (68.1%). Overall, 33.5% of the adolescents had been hospitalized because of health problems. Their average weekly working hours were $78.1{\pm}10.7$. Almost 50% of adolescent workers scored above the mean average in the Brief Symptom Inventory, indicating serious pschological health symptoms. Those who scored high for hostility, depression, negative self-concept, anxiety, and somatization were between 45.4% and 48.9% of the sample. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the underlying factors: a perception of "feeling very bad" health conditions was 2.07-fold whereas the rate of "no annual leave" was 0.73-fold, and both were found to be effective on psychological problems. Conclusion: In this study, it seems likely that psychological health problems are the result of multiple adverse factors including working conditions, annual leave, and health considerations.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.450-457
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• 2022

The construction industry is demanding, dynamic, and complex making it difficult for workers to recognize hazards. The nature of construction tasks exposes workers to several critical risk factors, such as a high rate of exertion and fatigue. Recent studies suggest that fatigue may impact hazard recognition in the construction industry. However, most studies rely on subjective measures when assessing the relationship between physical fatigue and hazard recognition, limiting such studies' efficacy. Thus, this study examined the relationship between physical fatigue and hazard recognition using a controlled experiment. Worker fatigue levels were captured using physiological data and a subjective exertion scale. The findings confirmed that physical exertion plays a significant role in hazard recognition skills (p < 0.05). This research contributes to theory and practice by providing a process for objectively assessing the influence of physical fatigue on worker safety and providing construction professionals with some critical insight needed to improve workplace safety.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.150-157
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• 1999

Developed in the study is the analysis of human factors involved in accidents of Korean Construction Projects. The 556 cases are sampled from a survey material 'Serious Accident Cases in the Construction Projects' edited by Korea Industrial Safety Corporation in 1995 through 1997. The analysis of these cases shows that existing classification system is not good for practical applications in real spots since they are difficult for engineers to understand. In this paper, human factors are classified into three groups by extracting the analysis and arrangement of the cases. Futhermore, We'll propose here a new type of accident which is subdivided. If engineers use this type of accident, they will be probably able to analyze efficiently human factors which are involved in accidents and relatied with how it happen. In the case of fall and upset accidents, personal factors seem to be critical when workers are horizontally moving in an unstable manner, and vertically moving without boarding facilities. Futhermore work environmental factors are important when workers release some materials and are performing building and dismantling tasks.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.179-182
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• 2015

Detecting and assessing human-related risks is critical to improve the on-site safety condition and reduce the loss in lives, time and budget for construction industry. Recent research in neural science and psychology suggest inattentional blindness that caused by overload in working memory is the major cause of unexpected human related accidents. Due to the limitation of human mental workload, laborers are vulnerable to unexpected hazards while focusing on complicated and dangerous construction tasks. Therefore, detecting the risk perception abilities of workers could help to identify vulnerable individuals and reduce unexpected injuries. However, there are no available measurement approaches or devices capable of monitoring construction workers' mental conditions. The research proposed in this paper aims to develop such a measurement framework to evaluate hazards through monitoring electroencephalogram of labors. The research team developed a wearable safety monitoring helmet, which can collect the brain waves of users for analysis. A bispectrum approach has been developed in this paper to enrich the data source and improve accuracy.