• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 2020

Background: To gain a better understanding of nonfatal injuries in Alaska, underutilized data sources such as workers' compensation claims must be analyzed. The purpose of the current study was to utilize workers' compensation claims data to estimate the risk of nonfatal, work-related injuries among occupations in Alaska, characterize injury patterns, and prioritize future research. Methods: A dataset with information on all submitted claims during 2014-2015 was provided for analysis. Claims were manually reviewed and coded. For inclusion in this study, claims had to represent incidents that resulted in a nonfatal acute traumatic injury, occurred in Alaska during 2014-2015, and were approved for compensation. Results: Construction workers had the highest number of injuries (2,220), but a rate lower than the overall rate (34 per 1,000 construction workers, compared to 40 per 1,000 workers overall). Fire fighters had the highest rate of injuries on the job, with 162 injuries per 1,000 workers, followed by law enforcement officers with 121 injuries per 1,000 workers. The most common types of injuries across all occupations were sprains/strains/tears, contusions, and lacerations. Conclusion: The successful use of Alaska workers' compensation data demonstrates that the information provided in the claims dataset is meaningful for epidemiologic research. The predominance of sprains, strains, and tears among all occupations in Alaska indicates that ergonomic interventions to prevent overexertion are needed. These findings will be used to promote and guide future injury prevention research and interventions.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.130-139
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• 2012

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the tire manufacturing work environments extensively and to identify workers' exposure to hazardous substances in various work processes. Methods: Personal air sampling was conducted to measure polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon disulfide, 1,3-butadiene, styrene, methyl isobutyl ketone, methylcyclohexane, formaldehyde, sulfur dioxide, and rubber fume in tire manufacturing plants using the National Institute for Occupational Safety Health Manual of Analytical Methods. Noise, carbon monoxide, and heat stress exposure were evaluated using direct reading instruments. Past concentrations of rubber fume were assessed using regression analysis of total particulate data from 2003 to 2007, after identifying the correlation between the concentration of total particulate and rubber fume. Results: Workers were exposed to rubber fume that exceeded 0.6 mg/$m^3$, the maximum exposure limit of the UK, in curing and production management processes. Forty-seven percent of workers were exposed to noise levels exceeding 85 dBA. Workers in the production management process were exposed to $28.1^{\circ}C$ (wet bulb globe temperature value, WBGT value) even when the outdoor atmosphere was $2.7^{\circ}C$ (WBGT value). Exposures to other substances were below the limit of detection or under a tenth of the threshold limit values given by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. Conclusion: To better classify exposure groups and to improve work environments, examining closely at rubber fume components and temperature as risk indicators in tire manufacturing is recommended.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.60-65
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• 2014

Background: To elucidate the relationship between safety culture maturity and safety performance of a particular company. Methods: To identify the factors that contribute to a safety culture, a survey questionnaire was created based mainly on the studies of $Fern{\acute{a}}ndez-Mu{\tilde{n}}iz$ et al. The survey was randomly distributed to 1000 employees of two oil companies and realized a rate of valid answer of 51%. Minitab 16 software was used and diverse tests, including the descriptive statistical analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, mean analysis, and correlation, were used for the analysis of data. Ten factors were extracted using the analysis of factor to represent safety culture and safety performance. Results: The results of this study showed that the managers' commitment, training, incentives, communication, and employee involvement are the priority domains on which it is necessary to stress the effort of improvement, where they had all the descriptive average values lower than 3.0 at the level of Company B. Furthermore, the results also showed that the safety culture influences the safety performance of the company. Therefore, Company A with a good safety culture (the descriptive average values more than 4.0), is more successful than Company B in terms of accident rates. Conclusion: The comparison between the two petrochemical plants of the group Sonatrach confirms these results in which Company A, the managers of which are English and Norwegian, distinguishes itself by the maturity of their safety culture has significantly higher evaluations than the company B, who is constituted of Algerian staff, in terms of safety management practices and safety performance.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.368-374
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• 2023

Background: Recognizing that access to safe and healthy working conditions is a human right, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls for specific occupational safety and health (OSH) programs for health workers (HWs). The WHO health systems' building blocks, and the International Labour Organization (ILO), highlight the importance of information as part of effective systems. This study examined how OSH stakeholders access, use, and value an occupational health information system (OHIS). Methods: A cross-sectional survey of OSH stakeholders was conducted as part of a larger quasi experimental study in four teaching hospitals. The study hospitals and participants were purposefully selected and data collected using a modified questionnaire with both closed and open-ended questions. Quantitative analysis was conducted and themes identified for qualitative analysis. Ethics approval was provided by the University of Pretoria and University of British Columbia. Results: There were 71 participants comprised of hospital managers, health and safety representatives, trade unions representatives and OSH professionals. At least 42% reported poor accessibility and poor timeliness of OHIS for decision-making. Only 50% had access to computers and 27% reported poor computer skills. When existing, OHIS was poorly organized and needed upgrades, with 85% reporting the need for significant reforms. Only 45% reported use of OHIS for decision-making in their OSH role. Conclusion: Given the gap in access and utilization of information needed to protect worker's rights to a safe and healthy workplace, more attention is warranted to OHIS development and use as well as education and training in South Africa and beyond.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.43-53
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• 2005

Purpose: To investigate the attitude, knowledge, and practice of safety and related factors of teachers in child care centers. Methods: The total sample consisted of 116 teachers from child care centers in Kyunggi Province. A questionnaire and checklist were used to collect data, which was analyzed with SPSS 11.5 Win program. Results: Most of the teachers were anxious about child accidents, and thought of safety as a primary concern. The mean score for knowledge on safety was 10.23, and the rate of correct answers ranged from 34.8％ to 98.3％. The mean score on practice of safety was 42.01. Teachers with higher education showed significantly higher scores in safety efficacy. Teacher's knowledge on safety was significantly different depending on the experience of safety education, but this did not apply to safety practice. Safety practice was significantly related to confidence in safety performance, health beliefs on safety, stress, and social support, but not related to knowledge of safety. Conclusion: Psychosocial factors were found to be important in safety practice. Related factors found in this study should be considered when providing safety programs for child care centers.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.296-307
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• 2018

Background: Safety culture, acting as the oil necessary in an efficient safety management system, has its own weaknesses in the current conceptualization and utilization in practice. As a new approach, resilience safety culture (RSC) has been proposed to reduce these weaknesses and improve safety culture; however, it requires a valid and reliable instrument to be measured. This study aimed at evaluating the reliability and validity of such an instrument in measuring the RSC in sociotechnical systems. Methods: The researchers designed an instrument based on resilience engineering principles and safety culture as the first instrument to measure the RSC. The RSC instrument was distributed among 354 staff members from 12 units of an anonymous petrochemical plant through hand delivery. Content validity, confirmatory, and exploratory factor analysis were used to examine the construct validity, and Cronbach alpha and test-retest were employed to examine the reliability of the instrument. Results: The results of the content validity index and content validity ratio were calculated as 0.97 and 0.83, respectively. The explanatory factor analysis showed 14 factors with 68.29% total variance and 0.88 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin index. The results were also confirmed with confirmatory factor analysis (relative Chi-square = 2453.49, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.04). The reliability of the RSC instrument, as measured by internal consistency, was found to be satisfactory (Cronbach ${\alpha}=0.94$). The results of test-retest reliability was r = 0.85, p < 0.001. Conclusion: The results of the study suggest that the measure shows acceptable validity and reliability.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.147-152
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• 2014

The purpose of this study, the overall occupational safety and health status and identify the characteristics of the workers engaged in the field of quick services, substitute driving services, home delivery, caregiver, film and television arts, to take appropriate measures to prevent industrial accidents, profession and working environment, safety recognition and education, and safety activities, accident experience and job stress survey. Survey using a structured questionnaire, 846 people directly interview research. Safety consciousness level of himself or herself was "fair level" of 3.19 points and those of colleagues and the general public were evaluated to be low as 2.84 points and 2.54 points, respectively. During the last 12 months, 21.3% of total workers in 5 job categories have received an industrial safety health education for job-related accident or disease and 87.6% of workers engaged in caregiver have received an industrial safety health education for job-related accident or disease. The proportions for delivery worker, substitute driving service and quick service/cultural art were 26.4%, 12.1% and below 10%, respectively. Frequency of having received an education was 5.7 days on average and education hour was 9.2. Regarding cases of having experienced job-related accident or having been exposed to job-related disease over the past 1 year, 17.0% of total respondents have experienced accident and 21.3% have experienced job-related disease. Preventive education for occupational safety is required to be expanded and strengthened. Except caregiver, the proportion of having received an information and education for safety rules and hazardous factors. Safety education is urgently required in order to prevent and reduce accident. Safety and health guideline is required to be developed and disseminated in order to prevent accident in advance.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.441-446
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• 2012

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of application of the contents of Korean Information Center of Agricultura Safety and Health (KICASH) with 80 subjects(male: 60, female: 20) from different provinces nationwide in 2011. Subjects were classified according to their sex and familiarity of computer and then categorized into 3 groups with poor, medium and good by self-evaluation. The test for the effectiveness and satisfaction about KICASH was conducted with likert scale from very bad (1point) to very good (5point). Subjects generally tended to give 4 points to contents. And they gave support to KICASH in that they showed about 4 point with intention of application of KICASH for safety and health irrespective of familiarity of computer. However, as they received the information passively, it will be needed to develop more interesting and various contents which they could get more helpful information for their health and safety actively using two-way information communication system in future. Therefore the study can helps improve farmer's health and safety through developing advanced health and safety information system.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.191-197
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• 2013

To classify the chemical hazard according to globally harmonized system of classification and labeling of chemicals (GHS), we investigated the genotoxicity of three chemicals, methyl myristate, 2-ethylhexanoic acid zinc salt, N,N,N',N'-tetrakis(2-hydroxyethyl) ethylenediamine, using male ICR mice bone marrow cells for the screening of micronucleus induction. Although these three chemicals have already been tested numerous times, a micronucleus test has not been conducted. The seven week-old male ICR mice were tested at three dosages for the three chemicals, respectively. After 24 h of oral administration with the three chemicals, the mice were sacrificed and their bone marrow cells were prepared for smearing slides. As a result of counting the micronucleated polychromatic erythrocyte (MNPCE) of 2,000 polychromatic erythrocytes, all treated groups expressed no statistically significant increase of MNPCE compared to the negative control group. There were no clinical signs related with the oral exposure of these three chemicals. It was concluded that these three chemicals did not induce micronucleus in the bone marrow cells of ICR mice, and there was no direct proportion with dosage. These results indicate that the three chemicals have no mutagenic potential under each test condition, and it is not classified these chemicals as mutagens by GHS.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.24 no.7
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• pp.804-811
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• 2014

A micronucleus test of cyclohexanone has not yet been conducted. To classify the chemical hazard posed by cyclohexanone according to a globally harmonized system of classification and labeling of chemicals (GHS), we investigated its mutagenicity by micronucleus induction in ICR bone marrow cells of 7-weeek-old male mice. The mice were administered three dosages of the chemical for 24 hr via the oral route. After 24 hr, the mice were sacrificed, and their bone marrow cells were prepared for smearing slides. Based on counts of micronucleated polychromatic erythrocytes (MNPCEs) of 2,000 polychromatic erythrocytes, cyclohexanone did not inhibit bone marrow cell proliferation in any of the treated groups, but it resulted in micronucleus induction. According to the results of the mammalian bone marrow micronucleus test, this chemical is mutagenic and classified as category 2 in the GHS.