Iranian Journal of health, Safety and environment
Volume:4 Issue: 4, Autumn 2017

In developing a specific WQI (Water Quality Index), many quality parameters are involved with different levels of importance. The impact of experts’ different opinions and viewpoints, current risks affecting their opinions, and plurality of the involved parameters double the significance of the issue. Hence, the current study tries to apply a consensus-based FOWA (Fuzzy Ordered Weighting Average) model as one of the most powerful and well-known Multi-Criteria Decision- Making (MCDM) techniques to determine the importance of the used parameters in the development of such WQIs which is shown with an example. This operator has provided the capability of modeling the risks in decision-making through applying the optimistic degree of stakeholders and their power coupled with the use of fuzzy numbers. Totally, 22 water quality parameters for drinking purposes were considered in this study. To determine the weight of each parameter, the viewpoints of 4 decision-making groups of experts were taken into account. After determining the final weights, to validate the use of each parameter in a potential WQI, consensus degrees of both the decision makers and the parameters are calculated. The highest and the lowest weight values, 0.999 and 0.073 respectively, were related to Hg and temperature. Regarding the type of consumption that was drinking, the parameters’ weights and ranks were consistent with their health impacts. Moreover, the decision makers’ highest and lowest consensus degrees were 0.9905 and 0.9669, respectively. Among the water quality parameters, temperature (with consensus degree of 0.9972) and Pb (with consensus degree of 0.9665), received the highest and lowest agreement with the decision-making group. This study indicated that the weight of parameters in determining water quality largely depends on the experts’ opinions and approaches. Moreover, using the FOWA model provides results accurate and closer- to-reality on the significance of each of the water quality parameters. Thus, using this operator can be a precise and appropriate method to determine the parameters’ weights and importance in order to develop specific WQIs for drinking, industrial, and agricultural purposes.

The construction industry is notorious for having an unacceptable rate of fatal accidents. Unsafe behavior has been recognized as the main cause of most accidents occurring at workplaces, particularly construction sites. Having a predictive model of safety behavior can be helpful in preventing construction accidents. The aim of the present study was to build a predictive model of unsafe behavior using the Artificial Neural Network approach.
A brief literature review was conducted on factors affecting safe behavior at workplaces and nine factors were selected to be included in the study. Data were gathered using a validated questionnaire from several construction sites. Multilayer perceptron approach was utilized for constructing the desired neural network. Several models with various architectures were tested to find the best one. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to find the most influential factors.
The model with one hidden layer containing fourteen hidden neurons demonstrated the best performance (Sum of Squared Errors=6.73). The error rate of the model was approximately 21 percent. The results of sensitivity analysis showed that safety attitude, safety knowledge, supportive environment, and management commitment had the highest effects on safety behavior, while the effects from resource allocation and perceived work pressure were identified to be lower than those of others.
The complex nature of human behavior at workplaces and the presence of many influential factors make it difficult to achieve a model with perfect performance.

Organization and employees’ attitudes towards chemical risks are an important contributing factor for safe and unsafe behaviors. These risks should be controlled to as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) level. The objective of this study was to assess chemicals risk perception, safety knowledge, attitude and their relationships with safe behavior among chemical workers in Iran. The study was a descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study. 209 workers from five chemical companies were selected in random and stratified sampling. Vinodkumar questionnaire as a demographic questionnaire and Smith-Jackson questionnaire as a safety behaviour questionnaire was utilized to assess safety knowledge, attitude, and chemicals risk perception. Collected data were analyzed utilizing T, ANOVA, and multiple-linear regression by SPSS V20. Males were in the majority (83.1%). Mean and standard deviation (SD) of age and work experience were 31.75±6.86 and 6.00±5.24 years, respectively. Also, mean and SD of risk perception, safe behavior, knowledge and attitude were 22.33±4.29, 22.12±2.88, 24.79±4.79 and 19.18±3.08, respectively. Gender and education were the most important demographic criteria in the case of difference in four variables. Also, correlation between safety behavior with risk perception and safety attitude was significant (p

Medical errors result in serious and often-preventable problems for patients. Human errors can be used as an opportunity for learning as well as a key factor for patients’ safety improvement and quality of patient's surveillance in hospitals. The aim of the present study was to identify and evaluate human errors to help reduce risks among personnel who render health services during critical hospital processes. This cross-sectional study was done in the Besat hospital in Hamedan in 2016. At first, the critical processes were selected via given scores in Delphi method and by multiplying the scores of each of the five criteria including the severity of the consequences caused by error incidence, probability of error, capability of the error detection, task repeatability and type of hospital ward with each other. Determining the risk numbers of each process, three ones were chosen with the largest scores. At the end, the selected processes were analyzed by the method of extended CREAM. The results showed that the highest CFP is associated with the CPR process, particularly in the sub-stage of command of starting CPR by anesthesiologists (0.0891), the one in the giving medicine process is in the sub-stage of calculating of medicine dozes and determining prescription methods (0.0796) and also the one in the tracheal intubation process is in the sub-stages of pulmonary and respiratory monitoring of patients and observing the vocal cords and larynx of patients (0.0350). Regarding the critical consequences of human errors in the selected processes, reviewing the qualities of roles and responsibilities of each of the medical group members and providing specialized introduction for hospital processes seem necessary.

Occupational accidents are one of important events in the world. Individual affecting factors on accidents are knowledge, attitude and perception of risk. So this study aimed to determine knowledge, attitude and safety performance in prevention of occupational accidents at one of Iran Khodro's piece making companie's workers. In this cross-sectional study, 212 workers from Mehrcam Pars Company selected by stratified random method at each working site in 2015. By simple random sampling, subjects were enrolled. Questionnaire was completed by workers through self-reporting. Questionnaire consisted of demographic and underlying information and questions about safety knowledge, attitude and performance in the workplace. Data were analyzed using SPSS 21 software. The average worker's age was 34.3 year with a standard deviation of 4.7%. 35.8% were not trained in terms of performing their job. 48.1% of participants had no history of injuries in site, but others reported suffers from mild to severe intensity. There was significant relationship between educational situation with attitude and safety performance. There was significant relationship between job experience with safety knowledge, attitude and performance. Age and worker's safety attitude was a predictive of safety performance. The results showed that there is significant relationship between safety knowledge, attitude and performance in the workplace with some variables. So in order to improve the overall situation of safety, some measures can be effective such as raising the knowledge of personnel, safety staff's participation management, balancing work and time.

Occupational Health Surveillance System (OHSS) provides a critical opportunity to monitor and evaluate occupational disorders and injuries over the time. Among more than 21 million employees in Iran, 62.08% and 38.03% had been worked in the industrial and private sections respectively. Present qualitative study was designed for collection of expert opinion of staffs in this field and determined proper characters of suitable Iranian OHSS. Present qualitative study was performed on an interview based on data from occupational medicine staffs. Some questions about OHSS definition, temporary accompaniment of occupational diseases and injuries surveillance system, OHSS promoters and consumers, type of requested data for OHSS and rewarding and controlling systems to prepare qualitative and valid OHSS data. Interview answers were read, summarized and presented. Most of study participants’ staff believed that OHSS in the scientific base must cover all of essentially its parts including disorders, hazards and accidents together. They believed that this combination was made by a team working with occupational medicine staffs and other specialties such as occupational hygienist and information technologists. They emphasized that the Iranian ministry of health had the capacity to promote OHSS and organizing executive committee with all of OHSS involved as team working in this field. Occupational staff had been focused on this fact that OHSS data must cover all of needed data of Iranian working population and their relatives. Iranian occupational registry system must be change and develop as Occupational Health Surveillance system according the main parameters which were found in occupational staff interview.

The published statistics show the increasing consumption of detergents and abstergents in recent decades. According to high utilization of these substances and their adverse consequences, the purpose of this study is evaluating the knowledge, attitude and performance of Kermanshah citizens about the hygienic, environmental and safety effects of using detergents and abstergents. This study is analytical and descriptive and the sample size was 386 persons from Kermanshah citizens in 2015. The methodology of this study is based on a self – made questionnaire and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.7. The SPSS – 20 was used for analyzing the data. 42.44% of them have high knowledge and 49% - 9% of them have respectively average and poor knowledge. 81.75% of participants have a positive attitude and 18.25% of them have negative one. Also 61.5% of participants have a proper performance and 38.5% of them don’t have a proper performance. There was a positive and significant relation between knowledge based on attitude (r=0.03) and performance (r=0.2). And also it was found that there is a direct correlation between attitude and performance (r=0.04). Since 38.5% of participants had poor performance and this is not satisfactory, it is necessary to instruct and inform people continuously about using detergents and abstergents correctly for better and more efficient performance.

Plaster is an important form of gypsum that mainly used in building construction. Breast cancer was investigated among women exposure to the dust of such material. The levels of CA15-3 and carcinoembryonic antigens (CEA) as indicators for breast cancer were measured in the serum of 120 women working in a plaster factory. All of involved women showed a normal level of CEA, while 12.5% of them had moderately elevated levels of CA15-3. In conclusion; plaster dust has no significant effect to cause breast cancer in working women. Moderately high levels of CA15-3 in some of exposed women may relate to liver diseases.