Journal of Occupational Health and Epidemiology
Volume:7 Issue: 1, Winter 2018

These days we have been hearing the news from different academic organizations, including medical universities and health research groups, that unfortunately some people working in the scientific centers fall in different sorts of plagiarism traps. It is even more terrible knowing that this is an iceberg shape problem (1). Of course this is not acceptable even though it might happen unconsciously. Mistakes due to the shortage of knowledge in the field of research ethics could be resolved by conducting educational programs in the different branches of the research. What is critically important and must be controlled as soon as possible is the plagiarism which happens consciously. The first step for controlling these types of plagiarism is working on its pathology as well as its epidemiology. In the other word, we need to know “why an academic person decides to commit plagiarism?” Many reasons could be listed by people, but one of them seems to be very important. My experience of working in a medical school for about 25 years and my contacts with my colleagues in different medical universities shows that our policies in the medical universities have deteriorated this unfortunate problem. In our medical universities we have forgotten that the ultimate target of research and publication is creation of new science which help human health. It seems like we have not attempted to teach our young students that this is the main reason for conducting research or whatsoever. Let me correct myself, may be the way we act with our research findings has misled our younger researchers!! We all accept that we would like to make a product from our findings (such as changing a behavior). But, what is this product?! Or what does “product” means? Martisiute et al presented a list of definitions for the “product” in 2010 (2). Regarding these definitions presented for “product”, all of them refer to a concept for “satisfying a need”. Now, what is the “need”? to reply, first we should say “whose need?” in other words, we should clarify that who should benefit from the research product? People or the researcher?! This is the key question. If we bear in mind that only the researcher (me) should have the benefit from the research, therefore in many cases, the ultimate target would be the PAPER! Because the researcher knows that it is not easy to sell the results of his health research to a customer in particular when layman people are the main customers!!. Publishing papers help the researcher to improve his academic position, for instance from assistant professor to an associate professor to a full professor. Or, helping him become a famous person in his field in the country or even in the world which is of course very tempting. Therefore, publishing a paper could become an ultimate target even if it is not honestly written, specially, when there is no method to help the journalists to detect many of the worse types of plagiarism such as data fabrication (3). It is a sad scenario, but who should be to blame?!
Medical universities have their own policies for improving both their staff position (people who work as researcher or lecturer) and the university position. It would be fine as long as they encourage their staff to publish papers, however, it would become a risk for plagiarism when it becomes an obligation. It would be even worse when there is no control or supervision. There might be this need in the near future to ask the universities or the research authorities to confirm research manuscripts before publication. There is still a long way to go for ethics considerations in the research worldwide.

Observing ethical principles is a part of nursing occupation and nurses should be aware of the importance of this subject when providing nursing care in order to provide their skills based on occupational ethics. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim to investigate the relationship between occupational stress and the workplace spirituality with the nurses’ occupational ethics through the mediating role of job enthusiasm.
This was a cross sectional-descriptive study. The study population consisted all man and woman nurses working at hospitals in Zahedan City, Iran. Cluster sampling method was used to select the sample group. A total of 160 nurses were selected as the sample for the study. To collect data, the organizational spirituality questionnaire proposed by Milliman, et al., standard occupational ethics questionnaire by Gregory C. Petty and Expanded Nursing Stress Scale (ENSS) by French et al., and job enthusiasm questionnaire were used. The data were analyzed using path analyzing method.
The present study showed that the job enthusiasm variable plays a mediating role between workplace spirituality and occupational stress with the nurses’ occupational ethics (P The results of the study, in line with other studies, show that occupational stress and workplace spirituality with impact on job enthusiasm can explain the occupational ethics of nurses.

The present study was carried out with the aim of extracting trace amounts of zinc in urine samples with ultrasound-assisted emulsification solidified floating organic drop micro-extraction (USAE-SFODME) method by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS). The efficiency was investigated using the solvent extraction volume, extraction pH, time sonication and temperature extraction. The present study was conducted aiming to respond on the efficiency of SFODME technique in extracting inorganic analytes in biological samples.
This was an experimental research with several steps. After preparation standard solution of zinc, USAE-SFODME technique was used for extracting zinc cation from urine samples. This method involves centrifuge, buffer and ligand adding, sonication, extraction of analyte and finally analysis with FAAS. Excel 2010 software was used in this study in order to plot the graphs.
Extraction of zinc was performed under optimized conditions of 2 ml 1-(2-Pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN), 90 µl 1-dodecanol, pH = 5.5, for 20 minutes at 35 ˚C. Recovery, the regression coefficient, and relative standard deviation (RSD) were obtained as 96.6% and 99.0%, respectively. RSD for tree concentration 0.8 µgml-1 Zn cation (Zn2) was 3.4%. The limit of detection (LOD) was found to be 0.426 µgml-1.
Using green solvents, downsizing the samples, replacement of toxic reagents use, and lack of needing the preparation of the samples are the most important advantages of this technique. USAE-SFODME has a successful development in determining trace amounts of zinc in urine samples which can be performed in chemical laboratories with rather ordinary equipment.

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are one of the most common work-related illnesses, which lead to high costs and a reduction in labor productivity. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between MSDs with mental workload (MWL) and occupational fatigue among the office staff of a communication service in Tehran, Iran, in 2017.
This descriptive study was conducted on 94 staff of a communication service company in June 2017. The data collection tools included Rapid Office Strain Assessment (ROSA), NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) questionnaire and Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (SOFI). Data analysis conducted using descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA test in SPSS software.
73% of the participants were women with mean age of 28.25 ± 3.40 years and the remaining participants were men with mean age of 26.91 ± 4.60 years. According to the results of the Nordic questionnaire, the highest pain was observed in the neck (65.94%) during the last year. According to the results of the ROSA, 71% of the participants were at the warning risk level and the need for ergonomic interventions. In addition, the relationship between occupational fatigue and its subscales with MSDs was significant in all cases (P The results of the present study showed that high workload and occupational fatigue cause MSDs, and intervention is necessary in these individuals.

Workers in different occupational positions experience significant Cu exposures, however, Cu toxicity has not been fully studied as compared to other heavy metals. In the present study, hematological and hepatic alterations have been investigated among copper mine workers.
This descriptive study was conducted in a copper mine in west of Iran, on 402 copper mine workers (study group) and 52 office employees (control group) during winter 2015. 5ml blood samples were provided from each subject and hematological and hepatic parameters including white blood cell (WBC), platelet (PLT), hemoglobin (HGB), hematocrit (HCT), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCH), lymphocytes, neutrophils, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and serum Cu levels have been determined using their commercial kits. The results were analyzed in the SPSS software using t-test and regression method.
ALT, AST, HGB, MCV, MCH and plasma Cu levels among the workers were significantly higher than the office employees (p Significant hepatic and hematological alteration were observed among copper miners compared to control group. Employment of workers with background hematological and hepatic disorders in copper industries must be accompanied with great caution.

Assessment of aerobic capacity is of vital importance in both general community and occupational settings. Valid, reliable and feasible tests are required to indicate the functionality of cardiopulmonary system. The present study was carried out aiming to evaluate the suitability of the Chester step test (CST) as a field test to measure the Iranians’ aerobic capacity.
In this descriptive study performed in 2016, 63 university students completed the Astrand-rhyming cycle ergometer test and the CST. Actual and predicted maximum rate of oxygen consumption (VO2 max) were recorded and their relationship was examined by Pearson's correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman plot. Repeatability was checked using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC).
Predicted and actual amounts of VO2 max were significantly correlated (r = 0.868, P CST is a valid and reliable field test for the estimation of cardiorespiratory capacity among the study subjects. With its exclusive features (e.g. safety, convenience and ease of use), CST could be suggested as an alternative to other existing methods of estimating VO2 max; the applicability of the existing methods among Iranian individuals are unclear. However, like other estimation methods, special prudence should be adopted when dealing with critical health decisions.

Awareness of the overall status of incidents and accidents and also the relevant causes can be extremely fruitful in preventing them. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the epidemiology of incidents and accidents in Dayyer, Province of Bushehr, Iran.
This cross-sectional study was conducted on 838 incident cases obtained from the registered data from the accidents and incidents registry of Dayyer health care system in 2015. The data were collected using a checklist. Then, the data were analyzed using descriptive (prevalence and percentage) and inferential (chi-square test and t-test) statistics.
Out of 838 registered incident cases, the overall rate of incidents was 15.1 in 1000 individuals; the rates among men and women were 22.6 and 7.3 in 1000, respectively. The highest rate belonged to men (n = 637; 76.0%) and the age range of 20-29 years (n = 201; 24.0%). The highest rate of accidents has been reported in urban regions (n = 661; 78.9%) which occurred at home (n = 340; 40.6%) and in autumn (n = 236; 28.2%). The highest rate of incidents belonged to trauma (25.4%), motorcycle crash (22.6%), and snakebite and scorpion sting (13.4%).
The highest occurrence rates of incidents and accidents were observed among men and the young compared to other groups in Dayyer. Thus, it is necessary that the appropriate programs be prepared for the public, particularly the young, via mass media regarding observing traffic codes and helping self-protection.

Noise pollution is the third most dangerous risk factor for human health after air and water pollution. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of noise pollution on sleep disturbance among Neyshabur governmental teaching hospital staff, Iran, in 2015.
This cross-sectional study was conducted in winter 2015. The sample size was 261 people from 2 hospitals in Neyshabur. The instruments for data collection were a CELL440 sound meter and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS software.
The mean sound level in the 22-Bahman and Hakim hospitals was 35.10 ± 8.79 dB and 44.60 ± 10.02 dB, respectively. 87% of the participants had poor sleep quality and 30% had to use sleeping pills to get to sleep. In 94.6%, poor nocturnal sleep caused poor performance during the day. 69.3% of participants reported that it took more than 30 minutes for them to get to sleep. Work history and exposure to noise had an inverse association with sleep quality. For each unit increase in noise, the score of sleep quality decreased significantly by 0.6.
Sleep quality can affect the performance of hospital personnel and can cause human errors in prescribing and injecting medications and other therapeutic interventions. It consequently has adverse effects on the patients. Therefore, necessary measures should be taken for reducing and controlling the noise, informing the personnel, changing shiftwork patterns, and allowing people to choose shift work voluntarily.