Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: One of the important consequences of globalization and development, especially in developing countries, are occupational accidents. As, today the economic burden due to these accidents is remarkable on the country’s economy. The aim of this study was financial estimate of the productivity loss due to work-related deaths in Iran in 2013.

Material and Method: In this study, occupational accident data were used registered in the environmental and occupational health center, in Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. A formula used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention America (CDC) was used to estimate the productivity loss. Finally, after replacing the necessary parameters amount of productivity loss was calculated.

Result: The total lost years of life were calculated 1293.15 years due to the deaths caused by occupational accidents. The total amount of monetary loss due to the productivity loss in the country, was estimated 730513.06 Rials. The greatest loss was in the 59-50 years old age group.

Conclusion: The negative rate of productivity, the large quantity of the discount rate, low life expectancy in the country as well as the low wages of the workers, are the likely reasons for minimal negative impact of the workforce deaths on the country’s productivity.

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Introduction: Correspondence analysis method and preparation of accidents and occupational hazards pattern is able to predict and anticipate accidents and is automatically prioritize the risks and injuries. The aim of this study was to present accidents and occupational hazards pattern based on risk-injury groups, which use it to manage of occupational accidents.

Material and Method: The report of occupational accidents, registered in the social security organization was collected in a period of ten years from 2005 to 2015 (222,300 accidents). Types of risk and injuries to any of the accidents specified based on International Labor Organization criteria and risk of injury were classified in a matrix (18 × 18). Risk-injury groups were separately identified using correspondence analysis and collapse process, as patterns of accidents and occupational hazards. In the mentioned patterns, the relationship between risks and damage can be identified, as it facilitates decision-making in risk assessment in companies covered by the social security organization.

Result: According to the findings, three groups of occupational accidents were obtained and variables of these three groups extracted from the obtained patterns. The first group included six risks and seven injuries that the risks variables were: contact with hot materials, accidents caused by caustic  and corrosive substances, contact with chemicals, accidents caused by toxic substances, contact with electrical equipment, explosion and fire, and injuries were: burns, other injuries, multiple injuries, gas poisoning, suffocation, poisoning, environmental hazards. The second group included seven risks and six injuries that the risks variables were: accidents caused by displacement, projections of fragments or particles, accidents caused by machine tools, slipping, falling people, falling objects, other accidents and injuries were: twists and sprains, dipping the objects in the body, objects in the eyes, cuts and amputations, superficial wounds, deep wounds. Finally, the third group included five risks and five injuries that risks variables were: Falling under the rubble, accident with vehicle, accidents caused by displacement, colliding of persons against objects, projections of fragments or particles, accidents caused by manual tools, trapped between objects, accidents caused by machine tools and injuries were: fractures, dislocation, back pain, hitting, contusions and crushing. It should be noted that the study of these patterns can be used to identify and prioritize of occupational accidents.

Conclusion: The proposed groups make new opportunities for development of the applications to analyze, interpret and automate management of occupational accidents in order to minimize uncertainty and increase its objectivity. Its advantage over other similar analyses can be considering both the risks and injury and to obtain groups of two variables. Due to the frequency and distribution of mass of risk and injury variables in the groups, the risk and injury variables of group 3 are the most important, and the risk and injury variables of group 2 are less important and the risk and injury variables of group 1 have the least importance.

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Introduction: Prevention of occupational accidents is of a great importance. Analysis of accidents and their causes could prevent the accidents recurrence. The study objective was to investigate the causes of occupational accidents in a dispatching project.
Material and method:  This research is descriptive-analytic. Data were extracted from the reports of occupational near-misses and accidents recorded between 2013 and 2017 and analyzed using Tripod-Beta model. Then direct, indirect and root causes of the accidents were identified. Based on the causes identified, a questionnaire was developed to analyze the workers’ mental patterns in relation to the real causes, and Friedman test was used to rank the causes.
Results: The results showed the falling/dropped objects hit a person, inappropriate working conditions and lack of safety trainings were, respectively, the most important direct, indirect and root causes as per the analysis results. The leakage of flammable and explosive substances, hazardous conditions in the workplace and discrimination in rewards were the most important causes from the employees’ views.
Conclusion: Identifying and ranking the most important causes of accidents would help to prevent the occurrence of similar events. Also, the analysis of the causes based on the employees’ mental patterns could be effective in the prevention of accidents.

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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: Maintaining and improving organizational safety requires a strong safety culture. Following the occurrence of occupational incidents, proper registration, reporting, and investigation is a key requirement for safety culture to provide an appropriate learning culture. As a result, this study was carried out to assess the culture of occupational incident registration, reporting, and investigation in the province of west Azarbaijan’s industries.
Material and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, data on the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incident were collected using a 68-item questionnaire. A total of 420 employees from a number of construction and mine companies, as well as hospitals participated in this study.
Results: The results of study showed that the average total score for the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents was 3.08 (±0.38), with the factor of corrective action had the highest 3.17 (±0.72) and the reasons for lack of reporting had the lowest 2.90 (±0.54) scores. There was also a significant relationship between the average score of the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents with education, industries, and companies. Employees who attended training courses had a lower mean score for the culture of occupational incident’ registration, reporting, and investigation than those who did not take training courses. The mean score of the culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents of the employees who had experienced an occupational accident was lower than those who had not experience occupational accidents in the past.
Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that corrective actions is necessary after the occurrence of occupational incidents. Attending training courses and having an occupational accident experience had no positive impact on promoting culture of registration, reporting, and investigating occupational incidents.