مجله مهندسی بهداشت حرفه ای
سال هفتم شماره 4 (زمستان 1399)

various type of chemical and biological agent with different health effect are used in laboratorial environment. Some researches indicated the risk of respiratory exposure in university laboratories. Present study aims to evaluate the operation of laboratorial hoods in campus and food and drug organization in Qazvin University of medical science.

In this study, 19 chemical and 10 biological hoods in campus and food and drug organization were evaluated according to ACGIH standards. Different factors like Face velocity and structural feature and their accordance to standards were examined and resulted data were analyzed in SPSS software, version 21. In hoods with low face velocity،ventilation system was designed using velocity pressure method.

According to the results, 92.6 present of hood had inappropriate condition and maximum face velocity was 158 fpm.67persent of chemical hoods had obvious leakage and they were improperly connected to roof channels by flexible duct. The result of velocity assessment in hoods connected to central ventilation system indicated 60% increase in airflow and 10 ± 92 fpm supply velocity.in order to use air diluting capacities ،ventilation chimney was installed at the top of building to prevent contaminated air return into building

Most hoods did not perform well and were unable to control respiratory exposure. Mainly hoods have their own ventilator which doesn’t have the ability to overcome the pressure drop in the discharge paths and meanwhile make a lot of noise.

Workplace noise is one of the causes of job stress. Stress can affect a personchr(chr('39')39chr('39'))s communication skills. Therefore, the present study was aimed to investigate the relationship between occupational noise exposure and workers communication skills.

This cross-sectional study conducted in 2019 in one of the mines in Yazd province. The sample size was 80 people who were classified into 2 groups (exposed and control). The instruments included two questionnaires of demographic information and Queendom communication skills test, as well as sound measurement with noise dosimeter and sound level meter. Finally, descriptive and analytical statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 21 software.

Analytical results of the relationship between communication skills and demographic characteristics showed that there was no significant relationship between all participants with demographic characteristics and subscales and final scores of communication skills (P > 0.05). Therefore, the two groups were not significantly different in terms of demographic intervention factors. The results showed that communication skills (both in all subscales and overall score) had a significant relationship with the level of sound exposure between the two groups (P <0.05).

The results show that communication skills will decrease due to exposure to noise. This skill is very important in jobs and can also affect productivity and accidents, so by reducing workerschr(chr('39')39chr('39')) exposure to noise, this ability of workers can be prevented from being reduced.

Nowadays, none of the industries are willing to have accidents in their workplaces and use different tools in this regard. One of these tools, which is capable of identifying risks and inappropriate situations, is risk analysis. Due to the importance of job risk prediction and reduction of occupational injury in this study, job risk prediction using different neural network algorithms has been investigated. The purpose of this research is in the field of applied research and in the way of conducting it is in the field of causal and survey research. Accordingly, the test database consists of 119 incidents in past year. Next, due to the high accuracy of the neural network algorithms on the database, it can be concluded that the database has sufficient reliability, in that the Dynamic ANN algorithm has the highest accuracy (76%) in predicting occupational injury. Also, based on the results, the most important criteria affecting the risk of day-time occupational injury, the type of accident and the hazardous situation involved in the accident. This research could have practical application to Azarab, as the company can put all the vulnerabilities together and predict the risk of each of these situations by implementing a neural network algorithm and accordingly offer Take risk control instructions.

Safety training as the most important step in obtaining safety qualifications for construction contractors can help reduce the accidents rate. This study has been conducted with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of safety training for construction contractors in reducing work-related accidents during a 5-year period (2014-2018).

This historical cohort study was conducted in forty-four contractor companies in 2019. Half of the 44 contractors were qualified by safety training and the other half were unqualified. The data were analyzed in this study included the characteristics of the contractors, safety training parameters and documents of contractorschr('39') safety qualification certificate, as well as the data on work-related accident reports. Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS v.22.0.

The highest and lowest levels of desirability in the training provided to contractors included training time (77.8%) and training technique (40.7%), respectively. The results of Cochranchr('39')s test showed that after providing safety training and obtaining a certificate of safety qualification, the incidence ratio of work-related accidents and deaths in the exposure group has decreased significantly (p<0.05). In addition, the incidence ratio in the two groups of exposure and non-exposure were significantly different in 2017 and 2018 (p <0.05).

The findings indicated that despite the reduction in the incidence ratio of work-related accidents and deaths after providing safety training, improving the quality and desirability of safety training to obtain a certificate of safety qualification of contractors can greatly increase the effectiveness of training and helping significantly reduce the incidence of construction accidents.

  Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) possesses the mental effects such as stress, anxiety ,and hypochondriasis in addition to physical effects .The present study was aimed to investigate the  relationship between of hypochondriasis  and resilience of employees at epidemics conditions of corona virus in an occupational environment.

This cross-sectional study was performed, in spring of 2020, on 275 personnel in one of the southern industries from Iran. Data collection instruments included demographic questionnaire, researcher made questionnaire, CD-RSC resilience questionnaire, and Standard hypochondria questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software version 22 by one-way ANOVA, Pearson  and linear regression.

The results showed that the mean prevalence of hypochondriasis was 33.37 and its standard deviation was 14.87 and the total mean and standard deviation of resilience score was 20.95 ± 78.56. there was a significant relationship between hypochondriasis and variables of age, career length, use of personal protective equipment, experience of corona and attention to preventive measures(P < 0.05). Also There is a significant relationship between resilience and age, career length, attention to preventive measures and the use of personal protective equipment(P < 0.05). A significant negative relationship was observed between hypochondriasis and resilience.   

It is necessary to implement measures for reducing the hypochondriasis disorder and increasing the resilience among employees, especially in the exposure to the hard conditions of corona epidemics.

Stress is a common disease of the 21st century and one of the major causes of stress in life is job stress. The aim of this study was to investigate the situation of job stress and emotional intelligence and their relationship in Andimeshk urban health workers.

A total of 143 health workers working in the headquarters of Andimeshk Comprehensive Health Center and Health Centers were evaluated through standard HSE and Bradbery questionnaires. The relationship between these two variables was investigated using multivariate regression and adjusted for confounders such as age, gender and workplace.

The majority of female participants (82%) and in formal employment, over 70% of employees had a bachelorchr(chr(chr('39')39chr('39')))s degree and more than 60% had at least 6 years of work experience. 63% of employees with moderate emotional intelligence and up to 86% suffered from mild to severe job stress. One-way analysis of variance test showed that there is a significant difference between job stress with place of work and gender as well as emotional intelligence with place of work and gender. Job stress was significantly inversely related to emotional intelligence (r = -0.42).

Health workers with higher emotional intelligence had less job stress. It is recommended that emotional intelligence training be included in the annual retraining of personnel and an intervention study of emotional intelligence training be conducted on job stressors.

The silica crushing is a process based on crushing, screening and, granulation of various types of silica rocks. The inhalation of silica dust leads to silicosis by causing irreversible fibrosis in lung tissue. The crystalline silica is classified as a human carcinogenic (group I) by the IARC. Azandarian region is one of the largest silica production units in Iran with 40 silica crushing factories. This study was conducted to application of Arc-GIS for zoning of occupational exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS) in this region.

In this descriptive study, the personal exposure levels to RCS in 16 workers silica crushing factories were measured according to the NIOSH method 7602. Also, 16 air samples were collected and quantified simultaneously to evaluate the environmental concentrations in the studied factories.

The results showed that the personal exposure level mean (2.01±2.61mg.m-3) was more than OEL proposed by the Technical Committee of Occupational Health of Iran country (0.025mg.m-3). The results showed a statistically significant difference between the mean concentration of the personal exposure to RCS in the different job activities (P = 0.001).

The results showed that there was no significant relationship between the personal exposure levels and environmental concentrations of the RCS. These findings showed that GIS has a desirable ability for zoning of occupational exposure levels to RCS in workplaces. This study also emphasizes the use of other modeling methods to determine the amount of silica release in the different units of the silica crushing factories.

The sudden emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may lead to anxiety due to this disease among hospital staff. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the anxiety caused by COVID-19 and its relationship with burnout among hospital staff.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on the staff of a hospital located in Zahedan, Iran, in May 2020. The subjects (n=353) were entered into the study using the census sampling method and inclusion criteria and completed a three-part questionnaire containing demographic and occupational information, Corona Disease Anxiety Scale, and Maslach Burnout Inventory. The collected data were analyzed in Stata software (version 14).

Based on the results, more than half of the samples were females. Most cases were married and within the age range of 20-30 years. The prevalence of severe anxiety was reported to be 11.9% and 23.2%, 7.4%, and 57.5% of the subjects showed job burnout respectively in the components of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal inadequacy. It was also revealed that there was a significant relationship between anxiety caused by COVID-19 and burnout.

It was found that there was a significant relationship between corona-caused anxiety and job burnout. According to the high prevalence of such disorders, it is suggested that more attention be paid to hospital staff due to their special role in the treatment of Covid-19.