• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.381-389
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• 2009

Confined spaces are inherently dangerous workplace and many fatal and nonfatal accidents have been reported. Even though these accidents occur in various kinds of confined spaces, there has rarely been reported on the health hazard agent, i.e., the types of gases and their concentration ranges. Therefore in this study, we evaluated several toxic and asphyxiating gas concentrations in various confined spaces. We surveyed 57 manholes, 3 sewage treatment plants, 2 yellow radish manufacturing companies and 7 barges to measure the concentrations of oxygen($O_2$), hydrogen sulfide($H_2S$), carbon monoxide(CO), ammonia($NH_3$). Lower Explosion Limits(LEL) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Those four types of confined spaces occupies 56% of accidents during last 9 years in Korea. In 57 manholes, the concentration varied according to the types of manholes; rainfall and sewage, and by location; residential and industrial areas. Sewage manhole in industrial area was evaluated as the most hazardous than other types of manhole like rainfall manholes, residential sewage manholes. The highest $H_2S$ concentration and the lowest $O_2$ concentration at sewage manhole in industrial area were 300 ppm, 8.7% respectively. In 3 sewage treatment plants, $H_2S$ and $NH_3$ concentrations were reached up to the 500 ppm and 200 ppm respectively. Two yellow radish manufacturing companies showed the concentrations of 316 ppm, 505.2 ppm, 90 ppm and 15.7% for $H_2S$, CO, VOCs and $O_2$, respectively. Seven barges showed 15.9%~20.9% oxygen concentration. Gas species and concentration ranges varied by the types and location of confined spaces; CO, $H_2S$, $O_2$ could be hazardous in manhole, especially manhole connected to sewage plants. CO, $H_2S$, LEL, $O_2$, $NH_3$ should be controlled in sludge silo and sluge pumping confined spaces in sewage treatment plant. The activity of lifting out radish from the storage tank was evaluated more hazardous rather than the other activities in yellow radish manufacturing industry. The employers must conduct the survey to identify all possible confined spaces in their local workplace prior to performing the tasks. At the national level to reduce the accidents in the confined spaces, we suggest that systemic approach and active education program including possible hazards, standard operation procedures, ventilation plan, and personal protective equipment in confined spaces should be implemented.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.19-28
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• 2011

Objective: The aim of this study is to reclassify human errors and to develop hands-on tools to apply the new classification for preventing human error accidents in highway construction site. Background: The main cause of accidents in highway construction was reported as the carelessness of workers. However, such diagnosis could not help us operationally prevent accidents in real workplace. Method: The accidents in highway construction were reanalyzed and the causes of human error were reclassified in order to educate and improve the awareness of human error in highway construction. Field survey and interview with safety managers and workers were conducted to find the causal relationship between the actual accidents and the human errors. Results: The most frequently observed human errors in highway construction were classified into six categories such as mis-perception, distraction, memory fail, slip, cognition error and mis-judgment. In order to provide hands-on tools to increase the awareness of human error in construction field, the human error checklist and card sorting diary were developed. Especially, the card sorting diary was designed to increase the ability in human error inspection of safety manager at construction site. Moreover, posters were developed based on actual accident cases. Conclusion: We suggested that the improved awareness and analytical report on checklist, card sorting diary and posters for construction field could collectively prevent the accident. Application: The classification of human error, hands-on tools and posters can be directly applicable on highway construction site. This analytical and collective approach preventing human error-related accident could be extended to other construction workplaces.

• Proceedings of the KAIS Fall Conference
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• 2010.11b
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• pp.859-861
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• 2010

The construction companies are facing potential EHS(Environment, Health & Safety) of major accidents to cause casualties or a financial loss and increasing social responsibility. So, they have to voluntarily accomplish the EHS management system rather than passively with regard to EHS regulation. In this study, the integrated EHS management system is developed based on cloud computing, and construction companies are to materialize self-regulation EHS process of construction workplace and to standardize the total EHS business process using the developed system. The proposed system also provides risk analysis, education/control and continuous improvement for EHS tasks and users can easily access the system on the web at a low price through cloud computing service. Eventually, the integrated system contributes to the managerial improvement by minimizing economic and physical loss caused by construction accidents.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2024

On January 8, 2021, the Act on the Punishment of Severe Disasters passed the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and has been in effect in earnest since January 2022. However, safety accidents at construction sites are still continuing, and it is necessary to discuss ways to improve the safety awareness of construction workers. Therefore, in this study, data were collected through a survey of construction site workers, and the effect of the organizational climate of the workplace on the level of safety consciousness of workers was studied. As a result of the study, the factors of organizational structure, guaranteeing autonomy and consideration of supervisors among the organizational climate of the workplace had a positive effect on the improvement of workers' safety awareness. Based on this, this researcher suggested that workers should be delegated the authority to perform some tasks according to the situation and content of the work during the field work and that incentives should be compensated according to performance.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.54-62
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• 2019

With regard to industrial accidents, large corporations and public institutions are continuously reducing disasters through systematic management. However, industrial accidents continue to increase in small-scale workplaces. In order to ensure the safety of workers, the government supports the purchasing of industrial accident prevention equitments through financial support projects for small business. However, despite the financial support, the effectiveness of the project is hardly verified. In this study, we analyze the policy effectiveness of the financial support program for industrial accident prevention in a small-scale workplace using the difference-in-difference method. To achieve research purposes, we used the data on the occurrence of industrial accidents, the status of workplaces by year and the data on the status of workplace benefiting from financial support program for the past 10 years. This study is significant in that it analyzed the net effect of financial support programs for disaster reduction in the small business site.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.134-141
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• 2021

As the domestic aviation industry grows, the aviation maintenance field is also growing rapidly. This change calls for more aircraft maintenance technicians, and interest in safety accidents is also increasing. Individual safety climate indicates the importance of safety in the organization. We expect that three individual factors (training effectiveness, procedure effectiveness, and work pressure) relate to safety behavior in the workplace via individual safety climate. The purpose of this research is investigating the relationship between individual factors and aircraft maintenance technician's safety behavior. Previous studies related to individual factors were examined for literature review. Based on the previous studies, research model was constructed. Hypothesis was verified by effected data from 305 samples were employed for final survey. The results show that individual factors were meaningful factors to effect perceived safety behavior, and safety knowledge & safety motivation were related to safety compliance & safety participation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.15-21
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• 2015

Looking at the large and small fire, explosion, or release accidents that occurred recently, we can see that the accident of subcontractor workers has been increased in the contractor workplace while a harmful or dangerous maintenance works. In this study, the actual status of subcontractor's safety management was examined by using the questionnaire to the contractor who submitted the process safety report. In order to improve the safety management of subcontractors, the responsibility and rational role-sharing between the contractors and subcontractors were reviewed. Also, Providing safety and health information and worker protection measures during maintenance were investigated. The results of this study can be used to help strengthen and improvement safety management of the subcontractor at the time of a hazardous or dangerous works. In addition, it will be utilized to reduce industrial accidents and to build mutual cooperation relationship between contractor and subcontractor.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.129-135
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• 2014

In recent studies, construction industry workers with higher job stress and lower work ability were more likely to experience accidents at their workplace. Likewise, fatal accidents rate was higher among simple labor workers compared to technical workers. Therefore the evaluation of a worker's job stress and work ability seems to be important in preventing the occurrence of fatal accidents. To search for ways to reduce job stress and to improve work ability, the current study conducted a job stress analysis based on age, years of service, skill level, hobbies, sleep patterns, and monthly income. For this, the Korean occupational stress questionnaire short form and the Work Ability Index (WAI) developed by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) were used. In this study, SPSS 12.0K statistics program was used for statistical analysis and significance was verified by the Kruskal-Wallis test and non-parametric tests. The results of this study can be summarized as follows : (1) Simple labor workers had higher job stress and less work ability than technical workers. (2) The more experienced workers had lower job stress and higher work ability. (3) In the case of workers who slept a lot, work ability was higher and job stress was less. (4) Monthly income influenced on the job stress and work ability. (5) Job stress and work ability in accordance with the age difference was not significant.

• 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.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.205-212
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• 2019

Background: Workforce health is one of the primary and most challenging issues, particularly in industrialized countries. This article aims at modeling the major factors affecting accidents in the workplace, including general health, work-family conflict, effort-reward imbalance, and internal and external locus of control. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Esfahan Steel Company in Iran. A total of 450 participants were divided into two groups-control and case-and the questionnaires were distributed among them. Data were collected through a 7-part questionnaire. Finally, the results were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and Amos software. Results: All the studied variables had a significant relationship with the accident proneness. In the case group, general health with a coefficient of -0.37, worke-family conflict with 0.10, effort-reward imbalance with 0.10, internal locus of control with -0.07, and external locus of control with 0.40 had a direct effect on occupational stress. Occupational stress also had a positive direct effect on accident proneness with a coefficient of 0.47. In addition, fitness indices of control group showed general health (-0.35), worke-family conflict (0.36), effort-reward imbalance (0.13), internal locus of control (-0.15), and external locus of control (0.12) have a direct effect on occupational stress. Besides, occupational stress with a coefficient of 0.09 had a direct effect on accident proneness. Conclusion: It can be concluded that although previous studies and the present study showed the effect of stress on accident and accident proneness, some hidden and external factors such as work-family conflict, effort-reward imbalance, and external locus of control that affect stress should also be considered. It helps industries face less occupational stress and, consequently, less occurrence rates of accidents.