• Advances in environmental research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.79-94
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• 2016

In order to evaluate the contamination and health risk, levels of six hazardous elements i.e., Cr, Ni, Cu, As, Cd and Pb in soils of 12 different land-uses were measured. The average concentration of Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb, As and Cd in soils were 267, 239, 206, 195, 58 and 16 mg/kg, respectively. Levels of each metal exceeded the environmental action level for soils, which could pose significant risk to human. The metal concentrations were subsequently used to establish hazard indices (for adults and children) where the 5th and 95th percentile values were used to derive the hazard index through different exposure pathways (ingestion, dermal contact and inhalation). Considering the total exposure through each of the three pathways, the hazard index elucidates that there was a potency of non-cancer risk at most of the sites for both the adults and children. The findings of this study suggested that different land-use soils were severely contaminated with hazardous elements and attention is needed on the potential health risks to the exposed inhabitants.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.317-323
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• 2021

Background: The surface mining industry has one of the highest fatality rates among private industries in the United States. Despite recent decreases in the fatality rates of comparable industries, the fatality rate in the surface mining industry has increased. Meanwhile, a lack of safety research in surface mining has hindered efforts to improve safety strategies in the surface mining workplace. Method: This study examined quarry workers' hazard identification skills by conducting a case study of a surface mining facility in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Semistructured interviews were conducted with eight quarry workers who were employed at the mine facility. In addition to the interviews, data were collected through field notes, notes from an expert meeting with safety managers, and site photographs to explore quarry workers' safety behaviors in the workplace. Results: The results showed that quarry workers identified hazards and improved their safety performance by translating safety knowledge learned from training into practice, acquiring hands-on work experience, learning from coworkers, and sharing responsibilities among team members. Conclusion: This study contributes to understanding quarry workers' safe performance beyond what they have learned in safety training to include their interaction with other workers and hand-on experience in the workplace. This study informs practitioners in the surface mining industry to build a safe work environment as they design effective safety programs for employees.

• 한국노년학
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.259-276
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• 2011

If frail elderly could use home care services adequately, quality of their life might improve and their costs of service would be decreased. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors on institutionalization of elderly using home care services in Korean long-term care insurance system. This study used the data of '2009 satisfaction survey of Korean long-term care system'. The survey proceeded using sampling data by region, level of long-term care need, and insurance type among beneficiaries from August 2009 to September 2010. The onset dates of institutionalization of 1,230 participants were ascertained from long-term care insurance claim data. This study calculated hazard ratio through Cox Proportional Hazard Model. The results showed that if elderly using home care services suffer a fracture, the hazard ratio of institutionalization is higher significantly. Although not significant, if older persons have more items of damaged cognitive functions, the hazard ratio of institutionalization is higher. The results have policy implications to supplement of home care service system and postpone institutionalization of elderly.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.2219-2231
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• 2012

This study conducted to investigate incidence rate and association of serum lipid profiles with incidence of ischemic heart disease. Study subjects consisted of 417,642 adults aged 30 years and over, who underwent physical examination and responded to questionnaire from health examination center of 19 university general hospitals. Hazard ratio of risk factor for ischemic heart disease (IHD) were calculated by Cox's proportional hazard regression model adjusted for ages, BMI and lifestyle (drinking, smoking and exercising). For TC/HDL ratio, hazard ratio of IHD in male increased from 1.21 times to 1.84 times increase with TC/HDL ratio, and that in female also increased from 1.26 times to 1.86 times. For TG/HDL ratio, hazard ratio of IHD in male increased from 1.17 times to 1.49 times increase with TG/HDL ratio, and that in female also increased from 1.42 times to 1.97 times. For LDL/HDL ratio, hazard ratio of IHD in male increased from 1.26 times to 1.82 times increase with LDL/HDL ratio, and that in female also increased from 1.26 times to 1.68 times. In conclusion serum lipid indexes are the significant risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. The higher the concentration of TC, LDL and TG is, the lower the concentration of HDL is, hazard ratio for IHD increased. Ratio of TC/HDL, TG/HDL and LDL/HDL were also verified to be significant risk factors for IHD.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.153-162
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• 2023

Background: Job safety analysis (JSA) is a popular technique for hazard identification and risk assessment in workplaces that has been applied across a wide range of industries. This systematic review was conducted to answer four main questions regarding JSA: (1) which sectors and areas have used JSA? (2) What has been the aim of employing JSA? (3) What are the shortcomings of JSA? (4) What are the new advances in the field of JSA? Methods: Three main international databases were searched: SCOPUS, Web of Science, and PubMed. After screening and eligibility assessment, 49 articles were included. Results: Construction industries have used JSA the most, followed by process industries and healthcare settings. Hazard identification is the main aim of JSA, but it has been used for other purposes as well. Being time-consuming, the lack of an initial list of hazards, the lack of a universal risk assessment method, ignoring hazards from the surrounding activities, ambiguities regarding the team implementing JSA, and ignorance of the hierarchy of controls were the main shortcomings of JSA based on previous studies. Conclusion: In recent years, there have been interesting advances in JSA making attempts to solve shortcomings of the technique. A seven-step JSA was recommended to cover most shortcomings reported by studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.123-137
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• 2000

Korea market of food service industry has been increased greatly since early 90's with the emergence of professional catering business and the expansion of school food service. Because of the characteristics of food service establishment, feeding many people at a time, there is always a high potential of foodborne outbreak which requires special sanitary management to prevent. Currently, many catering businesses are interested in HACCP(Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points), a new sanitary management system, and are trying to develop HACCP Plans for their food service establishment. Microbiological hazard analysis, a most important step for developing HACCP Plan, provides also basic information for evaluating sanitary aspect of prepared foods and their materials. There are not extensive data of microbiological hazard analysis for food service operations, especially for prepared foods and raw materials, which are helpful for developing a HACCP Plan. The extensive microbiological hazard analyses for 65 prepared foods and 51 raw materials selected from a couple of food service establishment were performed in this research. These results will provide useful information to determine hazards for developing a HACCP plan, and also to understand sanitary status for prepared foods and raw materials in food service establishment.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.22
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• pp.10027-10031
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• 2014

Background: We investigated the risk of cancer mortality according to obesity status and metabolic health status using sampled cohort data from the National Health Insurance system. Materials and Methods: Data on body mass index and fasting blood glucose in the sampled cohort database (n=363,881) were used to estimate risk of cancer mortality. Data were analyzed using a Cox proportional hazard model (Model 1 was adjusted for age, sex, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol level and urinary protein; Model 2 was adjusted for Model 1 plus smoking status, alcohol intake and physical activity). Results: According to the obesity status, the mean hazard ratios were 0.82 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.75-0.89] and 0.79 (95% CI, 0.72-0.85) for the overweight and obese groups, respectively, compared with the normal weight group. According to the metabolic health status, the mean hazard ratio was 1.26 (95% CI, 1.14-1.40) for the metabolically unhealthy group compared with the metabolically healthy group. The interaction between obesity status and metabolic health status on the risk of cancer mortality was not statistically significant (p=0.31). Conclusions: We found that the risk of cancer mortality decreased according to the obesity status and increased according to the metabolic health status. Given the rise in the rate of metabolic dysfunction, the mortality from cancer is also likely to rise. Treatment strategies targeting metabolic dysfunction may lead to reductions in the risk of death from cancer.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.705-709
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• 2009

Based on experimental study of lycopodium dust particles' behavior, we suggest the flame propagation model through dust clouds. With dust concentration, flame velocity reaches a maximum value at $170g/m^3$ to exceed the stoichometric concentration for lycopodium-air mixture combustion and decreases slightly in the richer side of $500g/m^3$. At $47{\sim}200g/m^3$, mean velocity of particle increases in proportion to flame velocity. As the sum of burning rate and particle velocity is approximate in flame velocity, the flame propagation velocity with lycopodium dust concentration can be estimated by the calculation and it was found that behavior of particles is useful for better understanding of dust flame propagation velocity.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.270-279
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• 2009

In order to check a necessity of health control for the laborers who are in use of mixed organic solvents in the printing industries, this study evaluated the use status of mixed organic solvents, health subjective symptoms on the exposure of the solvents, health hazard for each kind of printings for the employees who work for the printing industries located in Seoul and Gyeonggi. The study analyzed 228 sites and 311 people responded of the total 250 sites surveyed from March to September 2007, and obtained the following results; 1) Estimating the exposure of the mixed organic solvents, the study found that estimation of mixture(EM) was different for each kind of printings at a level of significance, excessiveness of EM was 7.5%, the highest, for gravure printing, 5.6% for screen printing, 4.7% for master printing, 2.9% for offset printing. 2) As to the mean scores of health subjective symptoms for each kind of printings, workers in screen printing showed high scores in every subjective symptom, of which symptom of central nervous system was 3.75, the highest, and the difference was statistically at a level of significance(p<0.01). 3) Results of the hazard analysis for carcinogens and non-carcinogens contained in the mixed organic solvents exposed to the workers showed that cancer risk of offset printing workers was $7.8{\times}10^{-9}$ for benzene, the mean cancer risk was $2.02.{\times}10^{-8}$ from Monte-Carlo simulation, and both risks did not exceed the US EPA permissible standard of $1{\times}10^{-6}$. The total hazard indices of the non-carcinogens estimated was 3.523, the highest, for gravure printing, 2.381 for master printing, 1.125 for screen printing, respectively, and all exceeded 1.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.17
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• pp.37-39
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• 2001

As the preliminary data collection for further chemical risk assessment. toxicants rating works is now rather extensively implemented in China. It consists of two parts, ie., rating of the hazard level of the exposed toxicant and that of the toxicant's profession. In the first part, the rating are based on six criteria, ie., acute toxicity, incidence of acute poisoning, prevalence of chronic poisoning, consequence of chronic poisoning, carcinogenecity and MAC level. Four hazardous levels are to be classified as extreme, high, medium, mild. In the second part. three determinants as weighted coefficients are taken into account, ie., toxicant's hazard level. exposure time and folds of MAC surpassing. Eventually, the index of classification C by which the work with toxic hazard can be classified is able to be calculated and assessed. Several comments were discussed and new recommendations were demonstrated.