Journal of Health Sciences and Surveillance System
Volume:5 Issue: 4, Oct 2017

Petrochemical wastewaters are a critical environmental challenge in industrial zones due to the amount of pollutants they release into the environment. Therefore, finding a solution for treatment of the wastewater has become the priority of the researchers. The main objective of this research is improvement of petrochemical wastewaters’ biodegradability using Fenton oxidation process and defining the effective parameters on the efficiency of this technique. In this research, the capability of Fenton method for promoting the biodegradability of hardly-decomposable wastewaters of petrochemical complexes was studied. The actual wastewater of Karoon and Maroon petrochemical complexes were used in this research. Design of the experiments and also the analysis of the experimental results were carried-out using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) with four variables and four parameters. A rector with sizes of 60, 20 and 20 cm was designed and built. The ranges of CODin, H2O2 concentration, Fe2+ dosage, and TDS variation were 1000-2500 mg/L, 1000-4000 mg/L, 500-3000 mg/L, and 4500-11500 mg/L, respectively, and the average ratio of BOD/COD in the inlet stream was 0.09. The range of BOD/COD in the outlet stream was 0.19-0.37 which decreased with the COD growth. The trend of biodegradability promotion with increase in H2O2 concentration and Fe2+ dosage was ascending, while the effect of TDS on biodegradability was not noticeable. The optimum conditions for achieving maximum efficiency of the reactor were COD=1375 mg/L, [H2O2] = 2509.27 mg/L, [Fe2+] = 1753.49 mg/L and TDS = 8622.9 mg/L and the BOD/COD ratio was 0.32.

Health literacy is a stronger predictor of health as compared to variables such as age, income, employment status, education level and race. In this regard, the World Health Organization has reported health literacy as one of the greatest determinants of health. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the role of family physician in the health literacy of rural population in Farsan district. This is a descriptive-analytic study conducted in 2017 in Farsan. The sample size was equal to 450. 205 males and 245 females were selected as the sample, using stratified random sampling. A questionnaire was used to conduct the study (response rate 85.3). The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were confirmed. Data were analyzed using descriptive indexes such as percentage, mean and standard deviation, along with Spearman correlation coefficient and regression analysis. The results of the study showed that 62.2% were female and 37.8% were male. 41.5% were in the age group of 20-29 years old and 7.3% were above 50 years old. Most participants in the study had a bachelor's degree (26.8%) with no history of disease (87.8%). There was a direct and significant relationship between family physician and health literacy (r = 0.355, p = 0.01). Emotional/informational support had a positive and significant effect on the increase in health literacy by 0.427 at a significant level of 0.05. Social support family physician of a community plays a major role in improving the health literacy of the people. Strengthening the communication and human skills of physicians and forming a sincere relationship with people's trust and confidence in the success of health programs; in particular, increasing the level of health literacy plays a crucial role.

Human errors play a crucial role in the incidence of industrial accidents. Hence, human reliability assessment (HRA) is essential as the most significant element of the system. The present study was conducted aiming at assessing human reliability in steering a blast furnace in an iron melting industry. The study comprised all HRA stages, namely data collection (through questionnaire), determination of the scope of the study (using interviews and questionnaires), task analysis (through hierarchical task analysis (HTA), determination and identification of errors (SHERPA ), screening, error quantification (HEART), and analysis and effect assessment of human error reduction. A number of 169 errors were identified among 140 Bottom-Level Tasks obtained from HTA diagrams. Among the 38 error producing factors, 22 were identified as effective factors, among which low workforce spirit (19%), excess team members (15.7%), operator inexperience (12.4%), and the poor quality of data transmission through instructions and through person-to-person interaction (11.75%) accounted for the highest effect on the whole operation. Human errors in operations for steering blast furnace occur due to a variety of factors, often rooted in various management levels, instructions for steering operations and repair, operators-panels interaction levels, and some factors affecting performance. As a single approach, the techniques used in this study yielded fruitful results. These techniques enjoy high validity though there were signs of technical immaturity, which led to failure in providing consistent control methods. Despite the technical weaknesses in the HRA techniques, currently the HRA is a useful method to enhance the reliability of crucial operations, such as the steering operation of blast furnace.

The AERMOD is one of the EPA preferred and recommended air quality dispersion models. The AERMOD is a steady state dispersion model for estimating the concentration of pollutants in urban, rural, flat and elevated, ground level and elevated receptors from different volumes, areas or point sources. In this study, in order to evaluate the accuracy of software results, the AERMOD was used for estimating the air pollution concentrations at different locations in Emam Hossein Square and Darvazeh Kazeroun Square of Shiraz City, where there are two DOE air quality monitoring stations. The modeling was performed based on hourly annual metrological data of Shiraz airport. The variable air pollutants’ emission rates were used based on different traffic loads at different hours at night and during the day. The modeling results are compared with the values measured at DOE air quality monitoring stations. The results showed that for the maximum daily concentration of pollutants, the AERMOD estimated values were about 5 and 20 percent higher than the values measured for SO2 and CO; also, the estimated values were two times higher than the measured values for NOx and PM10. Furthermore for the average daily concentration of pollutants, the AERMOD estimated values were about 17, 41, 42 and 38 percent lower than the values measured for NOx, CO, SO2 and PM10, respectively. The quality of ambient air in Shiraz City seems to be good since, except for the PM10, the concentrations of CO, NOx and SO2 were in the range of clean air standard. The maximum daily concentrations of PM10, CO, NOx and SO2 were reported as 0.497 mg/m3, 4246 mg/m3, 0.206 mg/m3and 0.037 mg/m3, respectively.

Proper weight gain is essential for the mother’s health and pregnancy. On the other hand, insufficient weight gain is directly related to a decrease in the growth and preterm birth. The present study aimed to determine the relationship between the mother’s Body Mass Index (BMI) and pregnancy and delivery outcomes in mothers referred to Gerash health centers in 2014. This retrospective, cohort study was conducted on the data from 554 pregnant mothers referred to Gerash health centers to receive pregnancy healthcare from April to November 2014. The mothers’ mean age was 25.9±5.4 years and their mean weight gain was 11.6±4.0 kg. In addition, 62.6% and 37.5% of the babies were born through natural delivery and cesarean section, respectively. About 9% of the children were pre-term, while 91% were term and post-term. Besides, 5.4% and 5.1% of the mothers got gestational diabetes and anemia, respectively. The results of logistic regression analysis showed positive relationships between the type of delivery and BMI (OR: 1.10(95% CI: 1.05-1.14)), history of cesarean section (OR: 0.02(95% CI: 0.01-0.07)), and mother’s age (OR: 1.06(95% CI: 1.03-1.10)) (p<0.05). Moreover, a positive relationship was found between the gestational weight gain and infant’s birth weight (g) (OR: 18.42(95% CI: 8.02 – 28.82)) (p<0.05). According to the finding, it seems that it would be necessary to plan educational and counseling programs before the pregnancy for the mothers. Therefore, the role of health authorities is more important than ever in promoting the general knowledge to reach the proper weight before and during pregnancy.

Premenstrual syndrome is considered as one of the most common psychiatric disorders that greatly disrupts women's life. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between mental health and premenstrual syndrome among female students of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. This study was conducted in 2016 on a total of 168 students residing in dormitories of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences who were selected by block randomization method. Data collection tools included demographic data, PSST & GHQ questionnaire. Data were conducted throughSPSS software, version 22, using descriptive tests and Spearman correlation coefficient. Spearman correlation coefficient showed a significant correlation (p<0.001) between premenstrual syndrome score, mental health and all its dimensions except for social interactions (P = 0.525). Moreover, anxiety and sleep disorders with a frequency of 51.2% were the most common mental disorder among the students. Our study showed that there was a correlation between premenstrual syndrome score and mental health in girls. Therefore, necessary measures should be taken by counseling centers in schools and universities to improve the mental health of people with premenstrual syndrome who have a higher risk of psychological and physical disorders.

In this cross-sectional study, 501 employees of petrochemical companies were selected by simple sampling method. Data were collected using Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory (SOFI-20), Occupational Fatigue/Exhaustion Recovery (OFER-15), and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). To identify the factors associated with fatigue and general health, we used ordinary least squares regression (OLS) and SUR and the results were compared. The analysis showed that satisfaction, mental disorder and sleepiness were the important factors associated with fatigue among these workers. However, the SUR estimator provided higher precision of the estimates than the OLS estimator as the parameters obtained by SUR are characterized by lower standard errors. As the models are intended to predict the fatigue risk factors, we particularly focused on the SUR method because it assesses the precision of the model in predicting fatigue determination. SUR estimators performed consistently better than the OLS estimators since SUR takes the correlation between error terms into account. The findings showed that the study population were young and almost had a low job tenure. The correlation test showed that there was a significant relationship between fatigue and general health with job satisfaction (p=0.05), sleep disorder (p=0.01) and mental disorder (p=0.001). Finally, the analysis showed that fatigue as the result of work was affected by some organizational and individual risk factors, among which "general health status" in general fatigue and "job satisfaction and mental disorders" in mental, physical, shift work, chronic and acute fatigue had the most effect. The prevalence of fatigue among the study population was assessed high. Thus, elimination and reduction of casual risk factors are necessary to reduce the prevalence of fatigue at work environmental.

The mental workload and cognitive failures are among the factors affecting the human behavior, performance and efficiency, which are both effective on the human error and accidents of the drivers. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between cognitive failure and mental workload of taxi drivers in Shiraz. This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted on 200 taxi drivers in Shiraz in 2017. In order to measure the mental workload and cognitive failure, NASA-TLX mental workload questionnaire and CFQ cognitive failure questionnaire were used, respectively. Finally, statistical analysis was performed using SPSS version 21. Pearson correlation, T-test and one-way ANOVA tests were used to analyze the data statistically. The taxi drivers' mental workload was reported relatively high in this study and the results showed that a significant relationship was found between mental and temporal workload and nominal memory error of drivers at 5% error level (p <0.05). Also, a significant relationship was observed between temporal pressure and performance and memory and attention, respectively (p<0.05). In general, a significant relationship was observed between total cognitive failure and total mental workload (p<0.05). Also, demographic factors as age had a significant effect on both mental workload and cognitive failure (p<0.05). The results of this study showed a significant relationship between the mental workload and cognitive failure, so that with increasing the mental workload, cognitive failure of taxi drivers also increased and the probability of the human error and consequently driving accidents increased. Therefore, reducing the mental workload with providing ergonomic solutions can greatly prevent the human error in driving as a major contributor to many accidents.