Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: To evaluate heat stress in the workplace different indices are used. But, none of these measures have been widely accepted. The aim of this study was to determine effective criteria in selecting a heat stress index and weighting of these criteria.

Material and Method:  This study is a qualitative study that was designed and conducted within 10 stages. In the current study, effective criteria for choosing a heat stress index was determined by using Delphi technique and expert’s opinions (30 people), and then the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was used for weighting and prioritization of these criteria.

Results: Analyzing the completed questionnaires by the experts and according to the percentage of respondents, 11 criteria were finally selected. “Simplicity” criteria by %76.6 had the highest percentage of response. But, the relative weight of this criteria was 0.041, and had the lowest weight after the “low cost” criteria.  The criteria relating to the “Standard” item was 0.141as the highest relative weight.

Conclusion: It can be concluded that the first step to have a reliable and accurate measurement is to choose a proper and correct index. Based on specialists and expert’s opinions, standardization of the index is the most important selection criteria. Other criteria that must be considered were accuracy, reliability and good correlation with the physiological strain indices.

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Introduction: Ergonomics culture emphasizes ergonomics policies, goals, and programs that create behavioral, environmental, and structural reforms in the governing environment of the organization. The present study assesses the ergonomics culture dimensions in the North Tehran Health Center office building through the Delphi method and an expert questionnaire.
Material and Methods: The Delphi method was used to develop an expert questionnaire. The evaluation criteria were determined based on the engineering dimensions of human factors and the organizational culture factor model. Besides, the sub-criteria were specified based on the macro-ergonomics approach. In this case, the most critical sub-criteria were chosen using 15 experts and the Delphi method. Thus, a questionnaire was developed with 15 questions. The ergonomics culture criteria were classified considering the frequency of negative responses. The highest frequency of negative response demonstrated poor ergonomic status and vice versa.
Results: The results revealed that the maximum average negative score among the six principal evaluation criteria was related to the information and communication index at an average score of 66. The other criteria were ranked as follows: the management, staff, equipment design, environment layout, and job characteristics with average scores of 58, 56, 54.67, 49.5, and 36.8, respectively.
Conclusion: The ergonomics culture questionnaire was prepared and analyzed by an expert team using the Delphi method. According to the indices, the ergonomics culture level was unacceptable at the North Tehran Health Center. Thus, it is recommended to provide ergonomics courses and seminars, video clips, pamphlets, posters, and related courses. Also, training and development of ergonomics instructions can help establish an ergonomics culture in the organization to a significant extent.

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Introduction: Many general indicators have been proposed to assess an organization’s safety performance. However, due to their holistic nature, these indicators may not always reflect safety-specific aspects of an organization’s performance. In other words, the nature of an organization’s activities necessitates the use of specific criteria to better reflect safety performance. This study aimed to identify and measure key safety performance indicators using the Delphi method in Alborz Province Electric Power Distribution Company.
Material and Methods: This descriptive, survey-based study utilized the Delphi method to collect the opinions of 11 safety experts in the electric power distribution industry. Opinions were gathered in four phases, and key indicators were determined in the last phase of the study. These indicators were subsequently used to evaluate the safety performance of Alborz Electric Power Distribution Company for three months.
Results: This study identified and documented 34 safety activities. The expert group proposed 20 indicators in the first phase of the Delphi method. In the second and third phases, four and one indicators were eliminated, respectively, because they did not receive the required score. The content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were calculated for the remaining 15 indices in the fourth phase. The results revealed that the mean quarterly performance scores of Alborz Province electric power distribution districts and departments in 2016, including Nazarabad, Savojbolagh, Mehrshahr, Fardis, West, East, Taleghan, and Eshtehard, were 78.9, 54.7, 78.8, 75.9, 75.7, 80.8, 61, and 83.5 out of 100 points, respectively.
Conclusion: The Delphi method is useful for identifying key safety performance indicators. The indicators discovered using this technique are active indicators (pre-accident) that are crucial in determining Alborz Electric Power Distribution Company’s safety performance. These indicators are suggested for use in evaluating the safety performance of other electric power distribution companies.

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Introduction: Improving health and the environment is one of the components of development, social welfare, and economic growth. Another influential factor in increasing health costs and reducing social welfare is work-related accidents and diseases, which impose high costs on individuals, industries, and the national economies of countries. Therefore, using multi-criteria decision-making methods, the present study provided a conceptual model to identify and rank work-related diseases’ environmental and health costs.
Material and Methods: The present study was conducted in 2023. A classification model for the economic evaluation of environmental and health costs of occupational diseases was developed to achieve the study’s aim. In the current research, the Delphi method was used to identify health and environmental criteria, and the Analytic Network Process (ANP) was used to weight the sub-criteria. Finally, the cost of health and the environment was estimated based on the available information. Naft Tehran Hospital (NSHT) was also selected as a case study site.
Results: The results showed that the drug and medical equipment cost factor, with a weight of 0.312 in the treatment sector, and the particular and infectious waste cost factor, with a weight of 0.085, were the most critical factors in the economic evaluation. Also, the parametric model results showed that 99.84% of the total costs are related to health costs, and 0.16% are related to environmental costs. In general, the results of this research showed that 61.3% of the costs of the health sector are related to the two sectors of medicine and medical equipment and the cost of service personnel, and 91.7% of the costs of the environmental sector are related to wastewater treatment and the cost of electricity consumption.
Conclusion: This study presented a semi-quantitative model to estimate health and environmental costs caused by occupational diseases. The results can create a novel scientific insight into implementing control measures using the optimal point of cost-benefit parameters. Implementing this integrated model can be a practical and effective step in allocating resources and prioritizing interventions.