• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.73-86
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• 1999

This study was performed to find out factors affecting degree of satisfaction with workers' working environment. The study subjects were 165 workers who were working at painting process of twelve furniture manufacturing factories in Incheon area. We used self-administered questionnaire containing general characteristics, working conditions, the degree of satisfaction with working environment, and the degree of satisfaction with working condition. In addition, we measured the exposure levels of occupational hazardous agents. The results were as follows; 1. Correlations between the degree of satisfaction with workers' working environment and the measured of occupational hazardous agents did not affect the degree of satisfaction with workers' working environment. 2. Factors affecting the degree of satisfaction with workers' working environment were not the exposure levels of occupational hazardous agents, but the degree of satisfaction with working condition, size of industry, health status, and types of ventilation system. As the degree of satisfaction with working condition was increased, the degree of satisfaction with working environment was increased. Also, for the workers who had good health status, the degree of satisfaction with work environment was appeared to be high. To increase the degree of satisfaction, with workers' working environment, firstly, effective work management and production control are required. Also, the worker's effort to negotiate continuously with top manager on improving working conditions is required. Secondly, developing heath promotion program to be appropriate for the characteristics of worksite is required. Moreover, leading worker's participation in health promotion program is very important to increase the degree of satisfaction with workers' working environment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.256-262
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• 2014

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify the major volatile organic compounds generated during extrusion work with nylon 66 resin and evaluate causes of discomfort among extrusion workers. Methods: A thermal decomposition experiment using nylon 66 resin collected at a worksite was conducted in the laboratory. Based on hazards identified through the thermal decomposition experiment, the exposure levels of the workers were evaluated. Results: The major decomposition products were formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, aniline, cyclopentanone and diphenyl amine. These materials were identical to those sampled in the extrusion booth. The sources of the annoying smells, about which the workers had complained, were formaldehyde, aniline, diphenyl amine, and other hazards in the vapor and fine particles produced by the extrusion work. Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and aniline were detected from air samples among workers involved in extrusion work. However, the concentration levels were much lower than Korean occupational exposure limits. The average concentration levels of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and aniline were 0.0120 ppm, 0.0036 ppm and 0.0006 ppm, respectively. Conclusions: The extrusion process at around $300^{\circ}C$ thermally decomposes the nylon 66 resin, emitting formaldehyde, aniline, and other hazards, which might have made workers uncomfortable due to their smells. The workers exposure levels to volatile organic compounds were far lower than Korean occupational exposure limits. However, since formaldehyde is a human carcinogen and acetaldehyde and aniline are also confirmed animal carcinogens, it is recommended that exposure levels should be maintained at a minimum level.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.75-83
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• 2013

The prevention of safety accidents can be achieved through Harvey's 3E's: Engineering, Enforcement, and Education. On construction sites, however, enforcement and engineering did not prove to be valid ways of reducing the number of safety accidents, as enforcement and engineering have failed to overcome and/or supplement the realistic limits regarding the relatively lower education levels of construction workers and the communication issues with foreign workers. On the other hand, safety education can enable the advancement of safety management by enhancing the educational contents and their methods of delivery. To improve the efficiency of safety education via educational contents, this research conducted a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the validity of the newly educational contents by overviewing possible accident types in different work phases. Of the accident types identified by the qualitative analysis, neither highly important nor insignificant accident types were found, yet all the suggested types are found to be required. In addition, this study did not find any significant differences in the occurrence probability of safety accidents related to the level of importance of each type of accident. The qualitative analysis in this research verified that the suggested accident types can be valid, educational material that can take into account future safety accidents.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.272-282
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• 2004

Stress is a primary health promotion issue in worksite research because psychological distress is closely related not only to workers　 health status but also to their job performance. This study identified the work environment and work condition factors affecting workers　 stress symptoms among the Korean manufacturing factory workers. A total of 7,818 factory workers employed in 1,562 manufacturing companies participated in the Korean nation-wide occupational health survey conducted by the Korean Occupational Safety and Health Agency in 2003. Participants were selected by the stratified proportional sampling process by standardized industry classification, company size, and locations. Trained interviewers visited the target companies and interviewed the factory workers randomly selected in each company. Work environments included physical work environments (temperature, noise, hazardous organic compounds, and so on) and psychological work environments (job demands, job control, and social support at work), and work conditions included daily working hour, rest time, and so on. Men were 71.5% and the mean age was 34.0 years old. The average working period in the present company was 6.9 years. The average stress score was 26.2 under the perfect score, 50, which means the moderate level of stress. Perceived stress had significant correlations with young age, poor physical work environment, high fatigue, bad perceived health status, and high job demands in Pearson's simple correlation analysis. Perceived health status and perceived fatigue explained 21% variance of stress symptoms and the work environment factor explained 4.8% of that; however, work condition did not have the sufficient effect. In particular, psychosocial work environment variables (job demand, job control, and social support at work) had a clear effect on stress symptoms rather than the physical work environments. Poor perceived health status, severe perceived fatigue, poor physical work environment, high job demands, low social support, heavy alcohol consumption and little exercise were significantly related to high stress symptoms in the Korean manufacturing workers.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.45-59
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• 2007

The operating tasks of overhead crane have caused undue stress to the operators from physical, mental, and environmental workload. Existing workload assessment models for musculoskeletal disorders such as OWAS, RULA, and QEC have limited applicability to the crane operating tasks because they focus mainly on physical factors and do not consider the relative importance of each factor. The present study was to develop a workload assessment model customized to overhead crane operation, following a systematic process: (1) analyzing task characteristics, (2) selecting workload factors, (3) developing assessment methods, (4) establishing action levels, and (5) computerizing the assessment model. Based on literature review, worksite survey, and focus group interview, 4 physical factors (awkward posture, static posture, repetitive motion, and excessive force), 6 mental factors (visual demand, auditory demand, task complexity and difficulty, time urgency, work schedule related stress, and safety related stress), and 4 environmental factors (noise, vibration, dust, and temperature) were selected and their rating scales and relative weights were determined. Then, based on the workload assessment results of 8 overhead cranes operated at different workplaces, the action levels of each factor category were established. Finally, the crane operation assessment model was computerized for effective analysis and report preparation. The present approach is applicable to develop a customized workload assessment model for an operating task under consideration.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.1561-1572
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• 2016

The ability to handle materials from one location to another, whether during transit or at the worksite is vital to all segments of industry. To varying degrees, many personnel in numerous workplaces take part in materials handling. Consequently, some employees are injured. In fact, rigging & slinging is a dangerous work using a crane and sling equipment to carry a cargo and the mishandling of materials is the single largest cause of accidents and injuries in the workplace. The majority of accidents associated with cranes and other lifting appliances are caused by faulty slinging, overloading, unbalanced loads, etc. which result in the load falling or tipping out of control, causing injury to people, damage to plant, machinery and the load. Therefore, recognizing the dangers of the works, there are much technical support including skill training in various institutes to minimize accidents during works on land. Although rigging work at sea is much dangerous than on land work because it needs to take account of the movements of the ships and waves, etc. in addition to land based rigging hazards, it is insufficient in appropriate actions that can improve the safety of the workers at sea. Therefore, this study suggested a rigging and slinging course for seafarers to improve their safety at sea by researching hazards and risk of rigging works and related skill training conducted on land.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.157-166
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• 2011

Objectives: Anxiety and depression are known to be associated with hypertension, and blood pressure can vary spontaneously throughout the day. The aim of this study was to evaluate anxiety, depression and 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (24-h ambulatory BP) in employees at their worksite. Methods: A total of 107 volunteers among 136 employees at a hotel in Gyeongju, Korea were enrolled in this study between December 2009 and March 2010. The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were used to assess anxiety and depression, respectively. Blood pressure was measured using a 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring system. Results: No significant differences in either BAI or BDI scores were found when hypertensive individuals were compared to normotensive individuals. The frequency of diastolic non-dipper was significantly higher in individuals with depressive symptoms compared to those without (p<0.05). Depression was significantly associated with diastolic non-dipper (OR: 6.85, 95% CI: 1.50-30.01). Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that depression should be considered when deciding upon blood pressure control regimens, and appropriate additive psychotherapy may be beneficial in the treatment of hypertensive patients.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.16-23
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• 2005

Purpose: The Purpose of the study was to suggest how the health manager use to be easy return-to-work of injured workers. Method: The data were collected by the health managers working at the 103 companies over medium size in Incheon, Gyoung-gi and Seoul through interview and report by themselves and analyzed by SAS V8 through t-test. Result: 1. The health managers are consisted of 2 kinds, one is health manager such as physician(10%) or nurse(81%) and the other is safety manager. The former works at the manufacturing company(62.9%), the latter at the service one(42.4%). 2. Management and counseling of occupational and non-occupational diseases, and high risk workers, health education, emergency care, worksite rounding, guidance of personal protector use, and health promotion services were highly performed by health managers. Comparing to these, safety managers performed guidance of job safety, safety management. The difference of two kinds of manager was significant statistically not only the aspect of general job but also related job to the workers of return-to-work after accident. Conclusion: This result shows that health manager can function as a care manager to the workers after return-to-work for adaptation to their job and rehabilitation bio-psycho-socially. But health managers don't have any regulations of encouraging injured workers to get their job again officially.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 1991

This study was conducted to investigate the dietary and nutritional status supplied by group feeding for blue color and white color in Seoul and Kyunggi area. The results are summarized as follows : 1. Blue color and white color of the average food supply per person per day was 1370.0g. Blue color of the total fool supply was consisted of 35.1% grain, 44.1% vegetables. White color of the total fool supply was consisted of 31.8% grain, 44.0% vegetable. The amount of milk product, fruit and fat supply were very small. 2. Blue color and white color of the ratio of main dish and side dish supplied was 69 : 31, 60.0 : 39.7. 3. Main dish all is rice. Side dish ard kinds of soupes and Jigeai Johngol in the two groups. In the kind of side dish white color much more than blue color. Dessert are scarcely supplied in the two groups. 4. The mean daily supplies of energy and 9 nutrients were above the level of the R.D.A. Blue color and white color of the mean daily amount of energy supply was 2653.0㎉ 3022.6㎉. Blue color and white color of the ratio of carbohydrate, protein, and fat supplied was 68.4%, 18.6%, 13.1%, and 62.1%, 20.9%, 17.0%. 5. Blue color and white color of the average feeding cost amounts to 460won, 812won per meal. 6. Blue color; There were high correlations in supply amoung energy, protein, fat. Carbohydrate, calcium, iron, riboflavin, niacin. White color; There were high correlation in supply amoung energy, protein, carbohydrate, calcium, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vit-C.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.593-603
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• 2019

Purpose: Previous studies have highlighted that the nutritional behaviors among South Korean workers are far from ideal. This study examined the organizational influences affecting the eating practices of office workers in South Korea. Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with 22 office workers at 12 companies in South Korea. The interviewer inquired about the employees' daily routines on food and beverage intake. The various factors that influence their food choices in their work environments were also explored. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using a content analysis. Results: A framework analysis revealed 7 key recurring themes, and these were grouped under three levels: team-, company-, and corporate group-levels. First, team dinners are core social events for all the workers and they tend to include high-caloric food and alcoholic beverages. The frequency of team meals and the food associated with them depend on various team characteristics such as gender composition, the nature of a team's work and the team leaders' emphasis on group meals. Second, the company's policies and practices regarding budget allocation for team meals and subsidies for cafeteria meals affect the workers' food intake practices. In addition, the physical environment of the worksite cafeterias can influence the choices of foods. Third, various corporate group policies that were not designed to target food intake had additional positive effects on the workers' eating behaviors. Conclusion: This study provides important insights into the broader organizational influences on the food consumption of employees in their workplace. These insights can be used to design and implement more effective intervention strategies for improving the nutritional behaviors of office workers.