Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: The present study was carried out to compare contrast sensitivity among three groups of professional welders including (1) those who use gas metal Arc welding (GMAW) (2) those who use shield metal Arc welding (SMAW) and the group that uses resistance welding.
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Material and Method: In this research, all the welders who use GMAW, SMAW and resistance welding working in an industry who were all male, performed contrast sensitivity test, using Freiburg. The contrast sensitivity test was done at three spatial frequency of 1cpd, 5cpd and 15 cpd under a constant condition. The three selected groups were similar regarding age and work experience. The result of the three groups at each spatial frequency were recorded and compared with other groups.
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Results: ANOVA test showed that decrease contrast sensitivity in spatial frequency of GMAW group at the spatial frequency 15cpd, significantly decrease comparing to SMAW group (p=0.028) and resistance welding group (p=0.041). The mean (SD) of contrast sensitivity at frequency of 1cpd, 5cpd and 15cpd was respectively 140.69±51.8, 172.7±43.75 and 39.8±25.92 for the GMAW group and 157.8±42.2, 183.21±32.01 and 60.57±54.30 for the SMAW group and 149.10±50.68, 180.60±35.42 and 57.38±39.22 for resistance welding.
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Conclusion: Although all welders use goggle or other personal protective equipment, loss of contrast sensitivity of GMAW workers can be attributed to the cumulative effects of the radiation.

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Introduction: Whole body vibration occurs when human is on a vibrating surface and the vibration influences parts of the body which are far from the contacted part. Up to now, various health-related problems due to whole body vibration have been reported, including back pain, sciatica, gastrointestinal problems, genital problems and hearing impairment. In the present research, vibration was measured about 2000 minutes in 23 train of 4 active lines of Tehran metro in order to determine the rate of subway drivers’ exposed to whole body vibration.
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Material and Method: Vibration meter and SVAN 958 analyzer, made by Svantek company, were utilized for measuring the whole body vibration. The level of weighted r.m.s acceleration for each axis, the combination of axes, peak factor, VDV and other common exiting ratios in the standard were measured and calculated according to ISO 2631-1.
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Result: Findings showed that according to Basic method drivers exposure to vibration is less than the lowest value of health guide critical region (<0.45m/s2). However, based on Vibration Dose Valuation (VDV), the exposure of 12 cases were higher than the lowest value (<8.5 m/s1.75) and only 11 cases were lower than the mentioned amount.
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Conclusion: Investigation of the result obtained from Basic method and VDV method manifested different amounts of vibration exposure in a way that VDV predicts higher level of risk, compared to basic method. The results shows that some presented indicators can not presented the safe zone in human vibration evaluations.

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Introduction: The most common standards being used for predicting the health risks of whole body vibrations are ISO 2631- and BS 6844, presenting frequency weighting anfd different coefficients for different sensivities in variuse axes. In yhis study, vibration was measured about 900 minutes on 9 trains in one of the active lines of tehran metro with the aim of comparing the mentioned standards in evaluating whole body vibation.

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Material and Method: In this research, in addition to evaluation of different kinds of vibration indicators, the differences of ISO 26331-1 and BS 6841 Standards have also been investigated. The amounts of r.m.s., vibration dose and daily vibration dose were measured in x, y and z axes for drivers seat and x axis for drivers back rest separately according to the instruction of the two standards.

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Result: The mean calculated values of r.m.s and vibration dose on a basis of 135 6841 standard were lower than those values calculated according to ISO 2631 standard. Moreover, the results showed that 3 cases, based on the ISO standard, had risk level of higher than 17 m/s1.75 and 3 cases, had risk level of higher than 15 m/s1.75 value, provided by BS 6841.

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Conclusion: Calculation according to the ISO 2631-1 standard show higher values. Indeed, ISO 2631-1 can provide a more secure criterion company to BS 6841, although the 15 m/s1.75 in BS is lower than the highest level of health guidance caution zone in ISO. Additionally, the association between r.m.s and vibration dose values in ISO 2631 is relatively lower than this association in BS 6841.

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Introduction: Each year tens of millions of labors are victims of occupational incidents leading to the disablement or death of many of them. The present study has been conducted with the aim of predicting the performance monitoring indicators of incident after implementation of the integrated management system in order to reduce number of incidents, safety monitoring, and giving priority to safety programs in the organization policies.

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Matherial and Methods: Using safety performance indicators, this descriptive-analytical study has been done in two stages in a combined cycle power plant on 254 incidents before the implementation (2004) and the years after the implementation of integrated management systems(a seven year period). The required data was gathered through checklist and interview with the injured workers. Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Chi Square, and Cubic regression tests were utilized for data analysis at significance level of 0.05.

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Results: Of the 1131 labors during a seven year period, 254 occupational incidents were recorded. The highest value of accident frequency rate was in 2004 (32.65) while the highest accident severity rate was in the year 2008 (209). Moreover, the lowest frequency rate and severity rate were related to the year 2011 with value of 9.75 and 29.26, respectively. Regression graphs, between the observed values and the estimated values, showed that the coefficients of all the indicators, except for β1of ASR,are significant(P< 0.05) as expected. This result implies the improvement in the safety performance and integrated management systems.

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Conclusion: Findings show that Cubic regression can be an appropriate to olforinvestigating the indicators trends and for their predictionin planning and monitoring the performance ofsafety unitso that the decision-making for determining the priority of organizations’ safety programs would be facilitated.

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Introduction: Whole-body vibration is one of the factors which may have adverse effects on the comfort of passengers and crew of rail transportation vehicles. In this study, the probable impacts of whole-body vibration were explored on the convenience of the passengers of Tehran metro.
 

Material and methods: Planning, measurement, and pre-analysis calculations were mainly done based on ISO guidelines No. 2631-1, 4. Moreover, measurements and calculations were done using SVAN 958 sound & vibration analysis and Microsoft Excel software, respectively.
 

Results: Average calculated RMS acceleration values on the levels of seat cushion, seat back, and legs were 0.57, 0.44, and 0.64 m/s² on the dominant axes, and total r.m.s acceleration in all these three levels equaled to 1.02 with the standard deviation of 0.11 m/s². Mean Vibration Dose Value (VDV) of total exposure in the minimum and maximum exposure durations were 6.44 and 9.63 m/s ^1.75, respectively.
 

Conclusion: Calculated amounts of dominant axes were mainly ranked as “relatively unpleasant” in the convenience limits of ISO 2631-1, but the total calculated amount of exposure based on WRMS was at “unpleasant level”. The measured VDV amounts were mostly on the z axis, as the dominant one.

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Introduction: Nowadays, human error is one of the main causes of incidents in the industry. One of the vital characteristics of modern industries is that the precise control of key parts of the process is performed by operators from central control rooms, so an error by the control room staff can be disastrous. The present study is aimed at identifying and evaluating human errors in the control room of the petrochemical industry.  
Material and Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic case study that was conducted in a control room of the petrochemical industry. In this research, firstly by using hierarchical task analysis (HTA), the tasks in the control room were identified and analyzed. Then, using the extended CREAM method, possible human errors were identified, their cognitive category was determined, and their probabilities were calculated using a new approach based on BN.
Results: The results of the study showed that the most prevalent control modes for the Boardman and the senior board man were strategic and scrambled modes with error probabilities of 0.136 and 0.171, respectively.
Conclusion: According to the results obtained in the modeling section, BN can be proposed as an approach with high processing accuracy and also high accuracy in modeling human errors and problems with high input parameters affecting the output parameter.

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Introduction: Even with the rising number of diseases and their severity as well as occupational-environmental accidents occurring within organizations, most managers do not still care about the profitability of implementing the health, safety, and environment (HSE) management system requirements.
Material and Methods: Accordingly, the integration of the HSE costs calculated through engineering-economics relations was investigated to evaluate the given profitability using a different approach. For this purpose, costs of diseases and occupational-environmental accidents were computed (n=2207), and then lack of their spending was considered as system income. By determining the correlation and calculating the P-value as well as the associated costs, the regression model was subsequently fitted. Investment in the HSE management system was further examined, and return on investment (ROI) and net present value (NPV) were calculated. Afterwards, the relationship between ROI and disease recurrence rates together with occupational-environmental accidents was explored.
Results: health costs with a P-value=0.03 had a significant effect on disease recurrence rates, so that the incidence rate was equal to 1.432 e-15 as it increased by one unit. The costs of accidents with a P-value=0.048 also had a substantial impact on the occurrence of occupational accidents and a growth by one unit, wherein the accident recurrence rates were 9.183 e. However, no significant association was found between environmental accidents and disease incidence rates.
Conclusion: The results implied that investment in HSE management systems is not just in accordance with implementing profitability requirements, but it should be targeted and based on priorities, influenced by the results of examining root causes of diseases and accidents as well as assessing risks facing organizations.

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Introduction: Assessing health, safety, and environment (HSE) performance based on up-to-date analytical models like resilience engineering, especially in automobile manufacturing companies, affected by the trilogy of HSE factors and functions, is of crucial importance. Therefore, this study was to review the factors effectively involved in HSE management performance assessment based on resilience engineering in automobile manufacturing industries.
Material and Methods: To collect and classify the data, many relevant articles and procedures published in journals or presented at seminars were researched and cited. In this study, reliable online databases, including Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed were searched to meet this purpose. Other databases in Farsi such as Magiran, CIVILICA, and Scientific Information Database (SID) were also employed. Accordingly, a total number of 211 articles were extracted and filtered in terms of content and topic by a team of four HSE senior experts, whereby irrelevant studies were deleted, the full text of each relevant article was more closely considered, and finally 18 studies were selected and thoroughly examined.
Results: The findings from these 18 articles revealed that the HSE would be influenced in various industries by factors such as organizational culture, learning and training, political-economic variables, workforce qualifications and skills, strategic and large-scale programs of organization plus its assets and financial resources. In automobile manufacturing industries as well, circumstances might emerge because of some extra-organizational threats and intra-organizational weaknesses, whereby the appearance of deficiencies in various processes and even the functions of the HSE as a whole would be impaired. Of the many external factors, one could mention economic sanctions, large-scale socioeconomic problems, and lack of materials and production equipment. The internal problems would also range from production reduction and cuts in budgets earmarked for different management departments to a rise in the number of accidents and diseases, soaring medical treatment costs, as well as growing expectations in employees, which together impact the HSE management performance.
Conclusion: Regarding the studies conducted on various models presented so far in the area of resilience, it was concluded that the HSE performance of organizations intended to prevent and control risk factors were by no means distinct from other management factors and strategic decision-making in an organization. Rather, the HSE indicators could be impacted by many extra- and intra-organizational factors. Based on the models surveyed, it would be essential to consider the concept of resilience in HSE management. The reason for this is that the idea of the HSE would appear to be an issue of less virtue and importance in various stages and situations in the lifecycle of an organization, which is not consistent with the HSE management system and does not keep pace with the influencing factors.

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Introduction: The oil and petrochemical industries had been amongst the first industries which developed the HSE-MS. This system aims to maintain and protect human resources along with reducing the environmental impact of the industry. Although it has been mulling over this system in a plethora of studies, unfortunately, most of the assessments have been carried out in a qualitative manner. In recent years, the evaluation of the performance of HSE-MS has been limited due to the lack of appropriate quantitative evaluations.
Material and Methods: In the present study, the development of criteria and sub-criteria of health, safety and environment management system was investigated using a different approach. Using the opinion of experts and according to the performed categories, a questionnaire was developed to determine the pairwise comparisons. Decision making trial and evaluation (DEMATEL) technique was used to determine the relationships between the criteria and network analysis method was used to determine their importance weight. the developed methodology was then evaluated and compared between two factories in a case study.
Results: The performance evaluation showed that the leadership and commitment criterion with a final score of 1.8; Risk assessment and management with a final score of 0.8; Planning criterion with a final score of .0.40; Policy criterion with final score of 0.33, Organization, resources, and documentation with a final score of 0.31, implementation and follow-up with a final score of 0.22, and Evaluation and Review criterion with a final score of 0.12 were ranked from the first to the seventh, respectively.
Conclusion: The results of the study demonstrated that the most important criterion for health, safety and the environment is leadership. The significant difference between the final score of the leadership criterion and the other criteria reflects its crucial importance in HSE-MS performance evaluation. Participation of employees, allocation of appropriate funding and support of innovativeness are factors to be implemented in order to improve HSE-MS program as a better and successful management.  

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Introduction: Safety situation awareness is an important element affecting operator's reliability and safety performance, which is influenced by various variables. Identification of these variables and their relationship will play a major role in optimizing control measures. The present study was conducted for this purpose.
Material and Methods: This study was based on the situation awareness, expert’s opinions and use of a Fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making method. Triangular fuzzy numbers was used to quantify the experts' judgments and to reduce the errors that result from theirs’ subjective evaluation on the relationships between the variables.
Results: The results showed that the studied organizational variables together with "safety/g knowledge" and "experience in job/specific task” are the most important predictive variables of situation awareness. Among the organizational variables, "Organizational Safety Attitudes", "Safe System Design" and "Education" are the most important determinants of safety situation awareness.
Conclusion: Fuzzy logic was used to aggregate expert opinions to determine the most important variables affecting situation awareness and their cause-effect relationships. Organizational variables are the main determinants of situation awareness. To improve situation awareness, the best results are obtained by modifying effective root variables, i.e., organizational variables and some individual variables.

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Introduction: Occupational accidents are one of the major challenges of the industrial workplaces. The identifying of the effective causes of the incidents occurrence, could be used to prevent them. This study was aimed to determine basic causes of occupational accidents in a vehicle manufacturing company.
Material and Methods: The occupational accidents leading to loss of time, which cause losing at least one working day, occurred from 2012 to 2017 were analyzed using the Tripod-Beta method and the causes of their occurrences were determined from the active failures to the root causes. The data were analyzed using the SPSS-22 software.
Results: Eighty percent of the occupational accidents that occurred in a vehicle manufacturing company were related to 6 root causes, i.e. the weakness of OR (20%), EC (17%), MM¬ (12%), CO (10%), IG (10%) and DE (9%). Absence of necessary authority to stop working is the most important reason for the occurrence of the weakness of Organization system with a rate of 28%.
Conclusion: By handling three root causes appropriately, i.e. improving OR, EC and MM, more than 50% of accidents can be prevented. Proper hiring of workers, exact definition of accountability and an accurate job description to the employees, proper monitoring and supervision, and near-miss recordings are suggested to reduce this incidence rate.

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Introduction: One of the most important complications of exposure to noises is changes in the gene expression patterns. Irreversible damage to the inner ear, such as noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), is caused by tissue damage and changes in the gene expressions in the auditory system. Changes in the GJB2 gene expression pattern lead to autosomal deafness at different loci. The present study aims to evaluate the GJB2 gene expression in cochlear tissue exposed to white noise.
Material and Methods: In this study, ten male Westar rats were divided into two experimental (W1, W2) groups of six rats and a control (normal) group of four rats. Two experimental groups were exposed to constant white noise in the frequency range of 100-20000 Hz and the sound pressure level of 118-120 dB. In order to study the histology and gene expression, after a cochlea biopsy, the histological tests, RNA extraction, cDNA synthesis, and qRT-PCR analysis were performed.
Results: The results showed that the transcript level of GJB2 was significantly decreased in both experimental groups W1 and W2 by 0.02 and 0.12-fold, respectively (p <0.05). Also, the results of the histological study showed that cochlear tissue was more seriously damaged in the W1 group than W2.
Conclusion: It can be concluded that a significant reduction in the GJB2 gene expression and irrevocable damage to auditory nerve ganglion and Reissner membrane (vestibular membrane) caused changes in the gene expression patterns in cochlear tissue and developed the risk of non-syndromic sensorineural hearing.

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Introduction: In process industries, some of the primary events may result in secondary events in an industrial unit called the domino effect. Since refinery storage tanks are always at risk of fire and explosion, quantitative risk assessment is important in determining the severity and outcome of an accident, taking into account the effects of dominoes on the main industry, neighbors, and society and can play an important role in risk management. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to quantitatively evaluate the risk of condensate storage tanks taking into account the domino effect.
Material and Methods: The technique used in this study was Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA), the analysis of the consequences of which was performed using PHAST (7.22) after setting goals, studying the process, identifying hazards and scenarios. Then, to determine the extent of the domino effects of the escalation vectors were matched against the threshold, and after screening, the overall vulnerability of the repositories for mapping individual risk levels was calculated.
Results: In the leakage scenario, after considering the domino effects, the risk contour 10-4 to about 250 meters and the risk contour 10-5 to about 400 meters increased. Also in the catastrophic rupture scenario, the radius of risk contour of the 10-5 increased to100 m after considering the domino effects up to around damage tank.
Conclusion: As can be deduced from the results, using this method can give a clear picture of the consequences of chain events and the probability of damage to nearby employees, equipment and neighbors, which is very important in risk, emergency and crisis management.

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Introduction: Unit risk management is a critical component of gas refining management, as risks that are not well-managed may lead to trip production failures. The present study aimed to provide a structural model for investigating the role and effect of different variables on stopping the gas production process in the gas refinery.
Material and Methods: This study was a retrospective cross-sectional and systematic analysis, which was carried out on key risks in the trip gas sweetening unit in a gas refinery industry located in Asaluyeh, Iran. The systems analysis was applied by using Fishbone Diagram, and then data modeling was prepared by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for an incident that occurred during gas sweetening production. Tools for the data analysis included the SPSS 24 and Smart PLS 2 software.
Results: Results of this research indicate that “Environment Risk” with a path coefficient of 0.943 and T- Value of 103.791; “Cost Risk” with a path coefficient of 0.937 and T- Value of 95.168; “Implementation of management system Risk” with a path coefficient of 0.847 and T- Value of 35.23; “Accident Risk” with path coefficient of 0.577 and T- Value of 25.410; “Time Risk” with path coefficient of 0.758 and T- Value of 15.121; “Human Error Risk” with path coefficient of 0.712 and T- Value of 11.215 had the most important coefficients of the paths respectively, that are effective in stopping production concerning other risks. Also, by comparing the path coefficients of the risks we can see that the impact of each of the risks on stopping production is different.
Conclusion: The findings of the present study revealed that a combination of variables can affect stopping production in the gas industry. Therefore, the role of these risks in losses in the refinery system should be investigated.

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Introduction: Risk assessment is a scale for predicting reliability and can manage interactions between components and process variables. Moreover, the reliability of one component or barrier affects the overall risk of the system. Being one of the most critical safety barriers of the storage tank, the failures of Fixed Foam Systems (FFS) on demand can result in severe consequences. FFS, is of grave importance in decreasing the risks associated with fires and damages.
Material and Methods: This study aims to determine the probability of root causes related to FFS failure through Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis (FFTA) to estimate system reliability. In conventional fault tree analysis, accurate data is usually used to assess the failure probability of basic events. Therefore, the introduced approaches were employed to quantify failure probabilities and uncertainty handling. Finally, system reliability was estimated according to the failure probability of the top event.
Results: The findings showed that 13 baseline events involved FFS performance. According to the results, failures of cable path and detection system (or resistance temperature detectors), set the activation switch (multi-position) incorrectly, and foam makers not continuously running are the three most critical basic events influencing the reliability of fixed foam systems. In addition, this paper estimated the system reliability at 0.8470.
Conclusion: The results showed that the FFTA could be used in matters such as reliability evaluation failure and risk assessment using experts’ judgment. This paper can also show the adaptation of the fuzzy approach to assess the failure probability of the basic event in the fault tree analysis (FTA).

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Introduction: Strategic management involves determining the organization’s direction, preparing a strategic vision and mission statement, and providing the basis for growth, profitability, and production. It also includes the inclusion of employee safety and health programs throughout the organization. The existence of a strategic plan for the scientific and practical strengthening of occupational health and safety is one of the country’s academic and industrial priorities. The purpose of this study is to present a strategic plan for developing the specialized field of occupational health and safety engineering in Iran.
Material and Methods: The current study is a collaborative action research study that was conducted in 2021. The strategic planning committee consisted of 20 professors, experts, and doctoral students. Over the course of 14 weeks, they held regular weekly meetings, collected information from inside and outside the organization, analyzed the organization’s internal and external environment, and identified its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Based on this analysis, the committee determined the organization’s mission, perspective, values, and general and specific goals for 2021-2024. They also identified the necessary measures to achieve these goals and developed an operational plan to improve the performance of the specialized field of occupational health and safety.
Results: Conducting this applied research led to the strategy of internal and external analysis of the specialized OHS field, determining the direction of the basic strategy, mission, perspective, values, and general goals. Finally, seven specific goals and 286 actions were determined to improve the performance of OHS. The SWOT analysis of OHS’s internal and external environment identified 27 strengths, seven weaknesses, 26 opportunities, and 12 threats. According to the results of the SWOT matrix, the strategic position of the OHS field is to implement preventive strategies and maintain existing conditions.
Conclusion: This plan aligns with the 4-year OHS plan. In developing the program, attention has been paid to the documents and policies of upstream organizations. The strategic position of occupational health and safety engineering is a prudent strategy. In this situation, strategies for maintaining existing conditions can be applied. Therefore, it is suggested to reduce the weaknesses of OHS as much as possible and increase its strategic capabilities by focusing on prudent strategies. From the second year of implementing the strategic plan, the OHS field can gradually focus on developing activities.