Journal of Health and Safety at Work

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Introduction: Safety signs provide information as well as instructions concerning the hazard or dangers in the workplace. The correct comprehension of these signs is very important for doing the necessary feedback in the specific situation which they are described.

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Method and Materials: In this cross sectional study, the comprehension of 10 selected safety signs were investigated in 53 randomly selected employees of an industrial company in Shiraz. The comprehension test was carried out by aid a standard questionnaire obtained from ISO 9186-1:2007.

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Results: In this study the mean comprehension scores of the tested signs was 65.95 percent with standard deviation if 28.7. The highest and lowest comprehension scores were for “use hearing protectors” and “biological hazard” respectively. The comprehension of 40 percent of tested safety signs was lower than the minimum acceptable values of ISO 3864 and ANSI Z535.3 standards.

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Conclusion: This study showed that there is a significant difference in comprehensions of tested safety signs. For full comprehension of safety signs it is necessary to train the employees or adding supplementary text to the symbols in some cases.

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Introduction: Traffic transportation system despite of benefits is one center of accident.According to studies, human factors as unsafe acts and drivers mistakes are causes of accidenta happening. The main objective of this study was to Study of unsafe behaviors among city bus drivers in Hamadan.

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Method and Materials: This cross-sectional study was conducted in spring of 2011. Fifty four drivers were chosen using simple random sampling among Hamadan city bus drivers. The required data gathered by using safety behavior sampling technique. Data analysis was done with Statistical tests such as t-test and one-way ANOVA.

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Results: The study results indicated that %42.71 of driver’s behaviors were unsafe. Double Park (%24.71), speaking (%14.99) and unsafe grasping the steering wheel (%12.46) allocated to highest percentages of unsafe behaviors. Also it was shown the rates of unsafe acts were increased in younger and low income drivers, apparently.

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Conclusion: Because of high percent of unsafe acts and considering importance of its consequences in drivers, reducing unsafe acts trough investment and utilization of behavioral safety principles is required. In this regard, holding educational careers are suggested to increasing driver’s awareness.

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Bazaars are most active and comprehensive center of urban life in Iran and according to its nature, have the economic and social functions. The nature and severity of risks associated with the quantity and quality of materials and enrgy available has led the growing importance of preventive safety assessment in Bazaars. The main objective of this study is to provide a model for risk assessment and management in urban Bazaars. After familiar with the studied systems, interviews with experts, using the Delphi method and paired comparisons, framwork of risk assessment and management was designed.The framework was tested and verified in Hamadan Bazaars. Results showed that the total risk of Hamadan Bazaars, 20.5% of zones in high risk area, and 79.5% were in cautious area. Using of 22 parameters to determine Bazaar zone risks and focus on total, preventive, detective and control risk was the strenght of this study.

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The safety of high risk jobs especially in oil refining activities is a major concern. In the present paper, the welding risks in Tehran oil refinery have been assessed using the Job Safety Analysis (JSA) and the effectiveness of the controlling methods have been investigated. A descriptive study was conducted on 33 risks of 10 welding tasks in Tehran oil refinery (north unit). After arranging the appropriate expertise team, tasks in the welding process were identified using two methods of viewing the process and interviewing with the welders. The risks of each task were then identified through viewing the process, interviewing the welders and completing safety checklists. Risk Priority Number (RPN) was used for risk assessment. RPN was estimated from Likelihood and Severity Numbers using Australia/New Zealand standard (AS/NZS 4360/2004). Risk assessment was conducted for existing and post-control conditions. The effectiveness of the controlling measures suggested by the expertise team was evaluated using appropriate statistical methods. The results revealed that in the existing condition, 27.3% of the studied risks have a RPN of 5 (with an extremely high hazard potential), 3% a RPN of 4 (with a high hazard potential) and 69.7% with a RPN of 3 (with a medium hazard potential). The results also revealed that with the application of control measures suggested by the expertise team, 21.2% of the studied risks will hold a RPN of 4 (with a high hazard potential), 6.1% will have a RPN of 3 (with a medium hazard potential), 48.5% with a RPN of 2 (with low hazard potential) and 18.2% will have a RPN of 1 (with a negligible hazard potential). Statistical tests revealed that the application of control measures, will reduce the average amount of likelihood, severity and risk priority numbers significantly (Pvalue<0.01).

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Introduction: In addition to direct and indirect costs of occupational accidents imposing on production companies, they impact the productivity of labor, too. However, gaining more profits and having less costs is always the main concern among industrial managers. Considering safety measures can be effective way to reduce occupational accidents and costs as well as negative impacts on production systems.

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Material and Method: In this paper, a risk assessment method using fuzzy and MATLAB software is presented to determine the safety level of production environments. The main parameters of this model include three items: accident probability, accident severity and current safety level. For this purpose, the statistical data of accidents and their causes published by Social Insurance Organization have been used in this study. Furthermore, expert judgments of safety and health professional have been used to determine the severity of accidents. In the fuzzy method, the Mamdani deductive fuzzy model has been adapted due to its easy applicability. Application of the model has been shown using a practical instance.

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Result: The defuzzified value for RL is found to be 3.48. Linguistic risk level expression is 100% substantial high risk that is full membership for fuzzy average set.

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Conclusion: The application of the proposed method can reveal which safety items and factors are most important in improving workers safety, and therefore decide where to concentrate resources in order to improve the safety of the work environment.

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Introduction: Every year thousands of people in Iran loss their lives in traffic accidents. Any those accidents, motorcycle accidents are fatal. Safety attitude is a predictor of risky behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality, attitudes to safety and risky behaviors.

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Material and Method: In this study 254 motorcycle drivers were randomly selected in Tehran city, and they were asked to complete personality, the attitude to safety and risky behaviors questionnaire.

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Result: A statistically significant correlation was found between different domains of personality (fear, anger, Emotional styles, altruism, anomaly) and attitude to safety (traffic flow in obedience to the law, driving speed, driving excitement), (P = 0/001). Also between personality and attitude to safety the relationship was statistically significant (p = 0/001).

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Conclusion: Attitude to safety is a predictor for risky behavior. Personality also the impact indirectly on the attitude to safety have and risky behaviors.

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Introduction: There are risk of fire accidents in Operating rooms during surgery. Experts estimate annually around 100 fire accidents occur in the operating rooms of United States’s hospitals. 10 to 20 of these accidents lead to severe injuries and about 1 to 2 lead to death. Despite such accidents rarely happen, but they can lead to serious injury or death of patients.

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Material and Method: This Cross-sectional questionnaire based survey was conducted among several hospitals belonged to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. In this study, all personnel of operating rooms were investigated. Questionnaire were used to collect information and the chi-square test was applied to examine the relationship between the Knowledge of operating room personels on fire prevention and control methods, jobs and work experience. For statistical analysis SPSS14 were used.

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Result: In this study from 220 participants, about 19.72% had full awareness, 19.62% had partial knowledge, 19.37% had low awareness and 40.97% had no knowledge on fire prevention methods, concerning fire control methods. However, 76% of the participate had full awareness and 24% had no knowledge. Test result Statistically showed that the relationship between the awareness of operating room personnel to fire control methods and work experience were significant (P-value <0.05). But, the relationship between the knowledge of operating room to fire control methods and the type of jobs were not significant. Also no significant relationship were found between the level of awareness in operating room personnel to fire prevention methods, work experience and job title.

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Conclusion: The results indicated that the operating room staff awareness of fire prevention and control methods are low. The results also showed that awareness of fires prevention are lower than the awareness of fire control among the studied personel. Regarding to the potential risk of fire in the operating room, it is suggested that in order to increase awareness of vulnerable patients and personnel in operating conditions, measures like educational need assessment, training workshops on fire prevention and control methods should be implemented.

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Introduction: Occupational injuries and accidents as one of the problems have always been considered important in occupational environments. Domino model that Heinrich was formed to pursue the idea of the cause of the accident is the man. Thus one of the effective way to reduce accidents will be control by the unsafe behaviors among workers by promoting safety culture.

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Material and Method: In this descriptive - analytical study, the reliability and exploratory factor analysis was used to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire. In total 303 questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 17 software.

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Result: The alpha crumbed, coefficient was 0/86. Structural factor of the questionnaire was evaluated using factor analysis. KMO and Bartlett’s sphericity test coefficient were 0/909 and 9785/057, respectively. The varimax rotation showed that all test questions are based on factors.

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Conclusion: The results indicated favorable validity of this questionnaire for use in detergents and cleaners industries within the country. Considering the load factor safety culture in detergents and cleaners industries, contained 5 factors including “management commitment”, “education and information exchange,” “supportive environment”, “barriers” and “priority to safety”. The obtained the correlations, the highest positive correlation was belong to the “management commitment” (r=0/952), as the strongest correlation with the safety culture.

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Introduction: The compliance of Health, Safety and Environment Management System (HSE-MS) requirements and proper HSE performance of employees, are the affecting factors on the organizations prosperity. The objective of present research was to determine the relationship between organizational culture and personnel HSE performance at Saipa Car Manufacturing Company.

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Material and Method: The present research was a deccriptive – correlative study. The Study population of this research were the manufacturing employees of Saipa car manufacturing company (N= 4865). Among the manufacturing employees, 365 employees were chosen as the sample beside on statistical estamination. Data was collected using a questionnaire which had three parts: demographic data, organazational culture and personnel HSE performance indicators. In order to convert the qualitative values of the questionnaire to the quantitative ones, the triangular Fuzzy numbers has been used. The data collected by observation and self- answering method then be analyzed using descriptive statistical tests and Spearman correlation coefficient, considering the relative importance of the indicators obtained form HSE experts’ comments.

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Result: Among the organizational culture indicators of Siapa car manufacturing company, control indicator (with the average score of 0.55) and among the personnel HSE performance indicators of Saipa company, performance indicator (with the average score of 0.66) had better situation, compared to other variebles. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between personnel HSE performance and organizational culture indicators except for Bonus System indicator (with the significant level of 0.112).

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Conclusion: Considering the significant relationship between personnel HSE performance and organizational culture in the studied company, paying more attention to the organizational culture will accordingly improve the personnel HSE performance. Moreover, by improveing and optimizing the cultural indicators, which have the greatest impact on personnel HSE performance a better organizational culture and personnel HSE performance mey be achived in the Saipa company in the future.

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Introduction: Occupational injuries are among factors that cause death and disability of thousands individuals in the workplace. Thus, identifying the influential factors of occupational injuries is of paramount importance. Previous researches have indicated that transformational leadership style has an essential role in occupational injuries. Consequently, the aim of the current study is to investigate the role of transformational leadership style in predicting occupational injuries among Esfahan Steel’s employees.

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Material and Method: The current descriptive-correlation study was conducted among 189 Esfahan Steel’s employees in 2012. They were randomly selected through Stratified sampling. Data were collected using transformational leadership style questionnaire (Bass and Avolio, 1990), safety consciousness inventory (Barling, et al., 2002) and safety-related events and occupational injuries questionnaire (Barling, et al., 2002). The obtained data were analyzed thorough descriptive Statistics methods, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, and regression analysis by SPSS 18.

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Result: The findings of the study showed that transformational leadership style had a significant correlation with safety consciousness and safety-related events (P< 0.05). The Results of regression analysis showed that transformational leadership style reduced the occupational injuries through increasing safety consciousness and reducing safety-related events.

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Conclusion: The present study emphasizes the importance of transformational leadership style and its instruction to mangers and supervisor. The consequences as well as the suggestion for the further study are discussed in this article.

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Introduction: Job satisfaction of nurses hasalwaysbeenconcernedin hospitals. It influences the quality of services offered by the nurses. Many nurses leave their job mainly due to the lack ofjob satisfaction.Different factors including the health and safety at work influencejob satisfaction. Thisstudy aimed to evaluate the occupational safety and health status of Khorram Abad’s Shohada hospital and to study its relationship with job satisfaction of nurses there.

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Material and Method: This descriptive-correlation study was carried out in Khorram Abad’s Shohada hospital. All (239)nurses working in 18wards of the hospital were participated in the study. The required data including individual and job characteristics, occupational safety and healthstatus as well as job satisfaction in terms of hospital nurses were collected using standard questionnaire. Collected data was analyzed with SPSS.19, using Kruskal-Wallis,Mann-Whitney and Spearman correlation tests.

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Result: The results showed that the occupational safety and health status of the hospital in 4 different studied areas were in a low level (with an average point of 23.2±5.3) from the participant’s point of view. The job satisfaction of nurses was also low (with an average point of 31.8±5.4). The safety and occupational health status of the hospital had a significant relationship with the nurse’s job satisfaction (P=0.001).

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Conclusion: The job satisfaction of the nurses as well as the occupational safety and health status of the hospital need to be promoted.

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Introduction: Process industries, often work with hazardous and operational chemical units with high temperature and pressure conditions, such as reactors and storage tanks. Thus, probabilities of incidence such as explosions, and fire are extremely high, The purpose of this study was to present a comprehensive and efficient method for the quantitative risk assessment of fire and explosion in the process units.

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Material and Method: The proposed method in this study is known as the QRA and includes seven steps. After determination of study objectives and perfect identification of study process, first, qualitative methods are used to screen and identify hazard points and the possible scenarios appropriate are identified and prioritized. Then, estimation of frequency rate are done using past records and statistics or Fault Tree Analysis along whit Event Tree. PAHST professional software and probit equations are used in order to consequence modeling and consequence evaluation, respectively. In the last step by combination of consequence and frequency of each scenario, individual and social risk and overall risk of process or under study unit was calculated.

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Result: Applying the proposed method showed that the jet fire, flash fire and explosion are most dangerous consequence of hydrogen generation unit. Results showed that social risk of the both fire and explosion caused by full bore rupture in Desulphrizing reactor (Scenari3), Reformer (scenario 9) and Hydrogen purification absorbers are unacceptable. All of the hydrogen generation unit fall in ARARP zone of fire individual risk (FIR) and FIR up to 160 m of boundary limit unit is unacceptable. This distance is not only beyond of hydrogen generation unit boundary limit, but also beyond of complex boundary limit. Desulphurization Reactor (75%) and Reformer (34%) had the highest role in explosion individual risk in the control room and their risks are unacceptable.

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Conclusion: Since the proposed method is applicable in all phases of process or system design, and estimates the risk of fire and explosion by a quantitative, comprehensive and mathematical-based equations approach. It can be used as an alternative method instead of qualitative and semi quantitative methods.

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Introduction: In the interaction between man and machine, the human behavior plays a key role in the accidents occurrence and the risks. Safety culture models can be a base to safety culture assessments and may lead scientists toward effective aspects of organization safety. The aim of present study was to develop and offer a specific questionnaire for safety culture assessment according to the customized model in an automotive industry.

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Material and Method: In this cross-sectional analytical study, a questionnaire including 16 items and 37 questions was developed based on management, individual, and organizational factors. Then, the reliability and validity of the developed questionnaire, it were studied among 30 employees of an automotive company.

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Result: Concerning the reliability of the questionnaire, the Cronbach’s alpha was 0.855. In the context of validity of the questionnaire, the simplicity and clarification of contents were investigated by means of Expert Analysis. Moreover, in terms of the integral components of culture, according to the factorial analysis, this evaluation regarded to have ten main components.

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Conclusion: So far, there was no exclusive tool for evaluating safety culture based on a customized model. The findings of the present study showed that evaluating safety culture using the administered questionnaire is valid and reliable in the understudied industry.

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Introduction: In HSE management systems competency has been considered as an important tool for selecting managers and resource allocation. Lack of proper HSE managers can undermine the performance of the management system. On the other hand competent HSE managers can improve the performance of management system and reduce the time to perform activities. This study was aimed to present a model to select the HSE managers.

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Material and Method: In this study, similar models were examined to select the basic framework. Model dimensions and weights were determined using the focus group technique. The model was used in a large industrial company. The model was approved by the evaluation of the results and correction of the identified defects.

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Result: The approved model included technical, behavior and concept competence. Technical competence for managers in level 1 and 2 and behavior competence for managers in level 3, were the most important dimensions.

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Conclusion: HSE managers in various level should have different competencies which can be evaluated by presented model in the current study, before employment and also it can be used as a basis for monitoring individuals during specific period of time.

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Introduction: Following the presentation of Domino model by Heinrich in 1931 this idea was formed that human is the most important cause of accidents. According to Heinrich, unsafe behavior (88%), unsafe condition (10%) and unexpected factors (2%) are involved in accidents causation. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigates workers safety, culture and its influencing factors in detergent and cleaner company.

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Material and Method: In order to determine the level of safety culture in the understudy detergent producing company a questioner developed in 2010 was used. It was included dimensions of management commitment, training and information exchange, protective environment, inhibitory factors and priority to safety. After collecting the questionnaires, data were analyzed using SPSS version 17.

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Result: The mean age of the participants of 37.5 years old and the mean work experience 13.7 years. 52.3 % of workers had not experienced any accident during their working year. Moreover, mean (SD) score of safety culture was 180.51 (±35.216).

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Conclusion: The difference of safety culture score were statistically different among occupational groups and also between workers with and without accidents.

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Introduction: In developing countries, promotion of road safety is of crucial importance. This paper presents the status of road safety in Iran during 2001 - 2006.

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Material and Method: The status of road safety in Iran was surveyed in this descriptive study using road safety indicators a in macro level. Firstly, 46 indicators were identified after studying almost all indicators related to the road safety. After consulting of views with road safety experts and considering the reliable existing data, 11 indicators were selected to study the safety status of the roads. Then, all essential data for determining each indicators were collected from related organizations and institutes. All indicators were determined and evaluated in the last step.

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Result: The results revealed that during the period of 6 years, death toll has been increased by 9 deaths per 100000 person of the population. Moreover, application of seat belt and safety helmet has been increased by 20% and 18%, respectively. It also indicated that the number of motorists and the length of paved roads have been increased by 20%, and 10%, respectively. The net income per capita has also grown from 5884 US$ to 7968 US$ and the life expectancy has gone up from 68.9 years to 70.9 years, the percentage of the literate population has grown by 2% (from 76% to 78%) and the human development index has increased from 0.721 to 0.759. The results of the present study showed that the increased level of death toll per 10000 vehicles and the increased level (%) of seat belt as well as helmet application, paved roads, urbanization, the net income per capita, life expectancy, literacy and human development index were statistically significant and R2 coefficient for this factors was 0.84, 0.9, 0.994, 0.9, 0.97, 0.82, 0.69 and 0.84 respectively.

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Conclusion: According to result of the present study, roads safety were not in an appropriate level. The roads safety status can be determined using road safety indicators to be applied for road safety promotion.

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Introduction: Due to the presence of extreme hazard sources and high intrinsic risk in refineries and process industry sectors, different layers of protection are being used to reduce the risk and avoid the hazardous events. Determining Safety Integrity Levels (SILs) in Safety Instrumented Systems (SISs) helps to ensure the safety of the whole process. Risk Graph is one of the most popular and cost effective techniques to do so. Despite Risk Graph simplicity it’s a qualitative method which is highly subjective and suffers from interpretation problems that can lead to inconsistent or conservative SILs.

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Material and Method: In this paper, Improved Risk Graph (IRG) method was presented and evaluated, and using Fuzzy Logic a novel approach namely Fuzzy Improved Risk Graph (FIRG) was suggested. In the proposed method consequence levels which were defined as qualitative terms were transformed into quantitative intervals. Having those numerical values, risk graph table was converted to a quantitative one. Finally, applying the presented approach and using three experts’ opinions and attributing weight factors, an ultimate numeric value was produced.

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Conclusion: as a result of establishing the presented method, identical levels in conventional risk graph table are replaced with different sublevels that not only increases the accuracy in determining the SIL, but also elucidates the effective factor in improving the safety level and consequently saves time and cost significantly. The proposed technique has been employed to develop the SIL of Tehran Refinery ISOMAX Center. IRG and FIRG results have been compared to clarify the efficacy and importance of the proposed method

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Introduction: According to the previous studies, about 90% of accidents in the workplace are due to the unsafe behaviors. In this study, the impact of personality traits, as a predictive factor on the unsafe acts was surveyed in a construction project of a car manufacturing company.

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Material and Method: In this study, personality traits and unsafe behavior rates were determined using NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) and safety behavior sampling (SBS) technique. The Spearman correlation coefficient was used. To analyze the acquired results, the total population of the project was 243 people.

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Result: The results showed that 31.7% of workers’ behaviors were unsafe behaviors. The correlation between unsafe behaviors and the neuroticism and extroversion were direct and significant (p<0.001).

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Conclusion: Assessment of the personality traits could be used as a predictive tool to identify employees with higher rates of unsafe behaviors and helps planning to reduce the accident rates.

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Introduction: Investigation of accidents have shown that more than 90% of industrial accidents are related to human aspects. What is more, safe behaviors can not be institutionalized in industries by only using technical-engineering measures and enacting safety rules. Building a positive and effective safety culture can make individuals aware of hazards and consequently reduce accidents in the workplace.

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Material and Method: In this analytical-descriptive study, a standardized safety culture questionnaire was used. The questionnaire comprised of 40 question including five dimensions of: training, work environment, safety priority, information exchanges and management commitment. In this regard, the questionnaire was distributed among personnel of three laboratories in a petrochemical company. Five point Likert scale was for recording the responses.

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Result: The mean score for safety culture was 136.7 for laboratory personnel which was considered positive according to the presented definition. In this sense, safety priority and management commitment with score of 31.9 and 25.2 obtained respectively the dimensions of safety culture.

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Conclusion: Strong and positive safety culture among laboratory personnel would prevent incidence of many occupational accidents. In another word, it would help organizations to facilitate access to higher standards.

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Introduction: Nowadays, using multi attribute decision making (MADM) techniques in HSE hazard rating have been widely increased. On the other hand, Analytical Network process (ANP) methods has a high flexibility and accuracy in decision ranking. Therefore, the combination of the two mentioned approaches can provide a more precise prioritization for HSE hazards. Using ANP techniques, in this research a method for accurate rating of HSE hazards in the construction procedure of combined cycle power plant was presented.

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Material and Method: In this study, first, the overall structure and components of ANP method were identified and the connections between its components were determined. Then, the determined structure and components were modeled, using super decision software. In the next stage, pair companions were performed between an criteria and sub-criteria with respect to HSE experts opinions, Finally, selected HSE hazards were prioritized and compared according to the presented ANP method and the common available method.

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Result: According to the results, common risk assessment method is not able to prioritized risk accurately. While the current method classified the ten main identified hazards in 4 general categories, the presented method in this study could prioritized then in 7 categories.

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Conclusion: The suggested ANP model could provide a more accurate prioritization for hazards in comparison with current methods because of considering five qualitative indices. This allows an optimal allocation of organizational resources for controlling hazards.