Application of safety signs in controling unsafe acts rate

The increasing fashion of development and the use of modern and sophisticated technology, despite several benefits, causes numerous problems in the field of health and safety from which, the most important one is the increase in the rate of accidents and occupational diseases. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the unsafe behaviors among a defense industry staffs in Iran and assess the role of warning signs in reduction of mentioned behaviors. This intervention study was carried out in one of the defense industries in Iran. At the first stage, using safety behavior sampling technique, behavior of 623 staffs working at studied unit was evaluated. At the second stage, after analysis of collected data, the frequency of each unsafe behavior and their proportion in the whole unsafe behaviors was obtained and then their probable relationships with some demographic features were investigated. Safety behaviors were calculated before and after (2 & 4 months) installation of standard safety signs (ANSI). Before intervention, 52.1% of behaviors were unsafe. The most frequent ones were the abuse or lack of the use of personal protective equipments, inappropriate postures and incorrect use of manual tools. However, after 2 and 4 months from intervention, unsafe behaviors rate reduced to 33.2 and 38.7%, respectively. The use of safety signs has significant impact on reducing unsafe behaviors in staffs however, its effectiveness is reduced over the time.