مجله مهندسی بهداشت حرفه ای
سال پنجم شماره 3 (پاییز 1397)

Firefighting is a stressful job with great degree of physical and psychological demands. The effort-reward imbalance and fatigue need for recovery in this occupational group can lead to the serious consequences. The present study tries to assess the influences of the personal variables on the effort-reward imbalance and fatigue need for recovery.   In this cross sectional study, 107 industrial firefighter were recruited in 2018. The effort-reward imbalance and fatigue need for recovery questionnaire were used to collect the required information. The data analyzed by multiple linear regression with SPSS 16 and statistical significance level was less than 0.05. More than 70 percent of the population study reported a desirable level of effort-reward imbalance and fatigue need for recovery status. The results of regression analysis revealed a meaningful relation among personal variables and contractual status with need for recovery index. In addition, a meaningful relation was found between the type of contractual status, sleep disorders and hypnotic drug with over-commitment. However, there was no meaningful relation for effort-reward imbalance.  The results showed a relative desirable status for effort-reward imbalance and need for recovery in the study group. It is recommended to intervene in working condition to obtaining more precise results.

Nail extension is a profession which is entered Iran recently and is expanding vastly. Every profession has its own harmful effects therefore working in nail salons regarding to awkward posture while nail services and equipment and tools which use in this profession makes nail technician face to Ergonomic risk factors. This study was conducted to evaluate the ergonomic status of nail workers in Sabzevar This descriptive-analytic study was done among nail workers in beauty salons. Nordic questionnaire was used to determine incidence of muscoloskeletal disorders and novel Ergonomic Pos-tural Assessment (NERPA) method utilize in order to evaluate body posture. Also local lighting of the work surface was measured to determine its association with muscoloskeletal disorders. Data were analysed using SPSS 17. The prevalence of pain in neck (63.8%), upper back (51.3%), waist (42.5%), shoulder (41.3%) and wrist (6.37%) has the highest value Body posture assessment using NERPA method also showed in all cases (100%), the final score was reached at the highest level (score 7 and the need for immediate change). In addition the intensity of local lighting was lower than the mandatory OEL level of Iran (53.19%) As the finding indicated, nail services as a unknown job and therefore lack of knowledge about this profession and also inadequate monitoring by occupational hygiene inspectors cause high incidence of muscoloskeletal disorders among nail workers, therefore in order to reduce these complications, health care organizations should pay more attention to establish roles and standards.

In the industrial and developing societies, work-related accidents are considered as one of the most important factors that negative impacts on health persons, general public and economy and they are considered as the third cause of mortality in the world. In order to reduce these incidents, the aim of the present study was to examine cognitive failure, safety consciousness and fatigue as the predictors of accidents happening in line employees of National Iranian Drilling Company. The present research uses a correlation method, type of predicator to predict the membership of a group of employees (both injured and health people) and   obtains an audit risk. The population of the study is consisted of the whole employees working in NIDC, that out of which 260 people were selected by simple random sampling method as a sample and they  were measured by Cognitive Failure (Broadbent et al, 1983), Safety Consciousness (Westaby & Lee, 2003) and Fatigue (Chalder et al, 1993) questionnaires. through audit analysis the data were analyzed by SPSS-16 software. The results showed that cognitive deficits, safety consciousness and fatigue variables were significant at P <0.05, P <0.001 and P = 0.11 levels, respectively, and all three variables could predict the possibility of accidents in workplaces. . Given the obtained results, it is recommended that to reduce the rate of the accidents, the variables as Cognitive Failure, Safety Consciousness and fatigue in workers should be studied and tested and those workers  are employed in the accident-prone workplace that have  high  scores in Safety Consciousness and have low scores in both  cognitive failure and fatigue.

Steel manufacturing industry is one of the most challenging industries in the world because the employees are vulnerable to a big deal of dangers regarding to the job's nature. The study evaluated the risk levels in the steel manufacturing unit of Iran National Steel Industrial Group in 2017. Method and Materials: Interviews with professionals as well as ETBA method to manage the risk analysis of the steel manufacturing unit. The risks were compared two by two with the software "Fuzzy AHP Solver" to get weighed (this weight was considered as the risk occurrence probability value). The incident intensity and also the controlling systems were evaluated by the experts. Then the risks were prioritized based on the three factors (incident intensity, occurrence probability and controlling systems) by using the software "BT TOPSIS Solver. 27 risk factors were specified under the categories of safety, health and environment. The melted inflection with the weight of 0.9018 and the gas consumption with the weight of 0.0263 were placed first and last priorities respectively. Then the results were categorized under four levels (high, serious, medium and low) where 44% were high and serious risks,41% were medium and 15%were low risks. This study shows the most important safety risks are the melted inflection and the collision with parts and tools and that the safety risks are of higher priority than the health and environment risks in the steel manufacturing factory. At last, administrative solutions were produced to control and reduce the risks.

The work conditions of nurses and laboratory technicians can lead to musculoskeletal disorders. The aim of the present study was to study the working conditions of nurses in internal and surgical wards and laboratory technicians in a hospital. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study which was conducted in a hospital in Tabriz in 2016. Thirty-two nurses and 20 laboratory technicians were participated in the study. The Nordic questionnaire and REBA method with a new scoring algorithm were used for ergonomic evaluation. For each occupation, the scores of upper body, upper quadrant, lower body, and the percentage of work-time spent with high-strain postures were calculated. One-way ANOVA was used for statistical analysis. The musculoskeletal disorders in neck(63.5%) and waist(55.8%) were prevalent. The mean scores of upper body, upper quadrant, and lower body were 8.16, 11.01, and 9.59, respectively. Only the score of lower body was statistically different among three occupational groups due to the difference in the score of the lower body of technicians with nurses. Internal nurses in 11% of and laboratory technicians in 8% of their work shift worked with high-strain postures of upper and lower body, respectively. The REBA method was easily accomplished in the workplace of nurses and laboratory technicians. The internal nurses experience more biomechanical stress than general surgery nurses, especially in upper body. To reduce the high strain postures, the implementation of ergonomic interventions are recommended to improve the postures of upper body of nurses and lower body of laboratory technicians.

Safety training, as one of the safety interventions, is believed to be an antecedent of safety climate and safety performance improvement within organizations. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of training and technical interventions to provide healthy safety climate in the workplace. In this interventional study, 480 workers of different job groups in construction Company were entered the study. Data were collected using demographic, safety climate and safety performance questionnaires. Questionnaires were completed at three stages including before the intervention, one month after the first intervention and one month after the second intervention (four months after the first intervention). Data were analyzed by paired t-test, one-way analysis of variance and bonferroni test using SPSS23 software. The findings of this study revealed that there was a significant improvement in all safety training impact subscales indicating that employees promoted their safety performance. The findings of this study also revealed significant improvements in the safety climate, indicating that the training role has been viewed as crucial in improving and supporting employees’ and organization’s safety. Overall, the current study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of safety training impacts and its influence on safety climate, particularly with regard to the improvement of safety performance. The need for further research to investigate the effectiveness of specific safety training intervention with the addition of motivational factors, and its relation to safety climate over a period of time in various industries, remain crucial.

In order to take control measures to protect the health of employees against occupational hazardous agents, assessing occupational health risks is essential. The purpose of this study was to develop a method for occupational health risk assessment in a petrochemical industry. This cross-sectional study was carried out among operational and administrative occupational groups in one of the petrochemicals plants in south of Iran. The “comprehensive occupational health risk assessment (COHRA)” method was used to assess the risks of occupational hazards. For this purpose, the exposure rate (ER) and hazard rate (HR) for all hazards were determined based on the results of exposure measurements and health hazards data, respectively. Finally, the risk of occupational health hazards was calculated by multiplying the ER by HR and evaluated. The level of risk in 13.6% of studied occupational groups was evaluated as high. Among occupational health hazards, the risk of exposure to noise and inappropriate lighting, benzene and ergonomic factors were assessed at high and moderate level, respectively. The risk of all occupational health hazards, except for ergonomic factors, were higher among operational compared to administrative jobs. Comprehensive occupational health risk assessment could be used for prioritizing the occupational health hazards and deciding about resource allocation and required control measures.

Road accidents are among the major problems of road transportation in Iran. There are four factors involved in road accidents, including human, road, vehicle, and environment. Among these, human (driver) error has an important role in 70-90% of the accidents. Therefore, the present study was aimed at identifying and examining driver errors using the Cognitive Reliability Error Analysis Method. A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used to examine a specific scenario involving driving tasks. First, using the Hierarchical task analysis, the driving tasks for the scenario were analyzed. Then, using the primary and broad CREAM techniques, possible driver controls and cognitive errors were determined for the tasks. Analysis of the scenario using the primary CREAM technique revealed nine diver tasks, including wearing a seat-belt, controlling the indicators, acceleration changing, direction changing, adjusting the distance, stopping the car, turning off the car, unbuckling the seat belt, and the light type of tactical control. Then, using the broad CREAM technique, the execution (71.87%), observation (18.75), and Interpretation (9.38%) errors were determined. Using the primary technique, four cases of performance-reducing conditions were identified. In General, according to the broad CREAM technique, 32 driver errors were identified. The most common cognitive errors included execution and observation errors. It can be concluded that based on the proposed controls, the risk of human error can be reduced for the analyzed subtasks.