Archives Of Occupational Health
Volume:5 Issue: 2, Apr 2021

Physiotherapists (PTs) are at the highest risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) because of the nature of demands from their profession. This review aims to describe current knowledge associated with the prevalence and risk factors of WMSDs among Indian PTs.

Various electronic databases were searched for literature relating to WMSDs in PTs from India between years 2010 and 2020. Four full texts and two abstracts were selected based on the inclusion criteria and reviewed in a narrative way.

Overall prevalence of WMSDs among PTs was reported to be high, with lifetime prevalence as high as 91%, and the lower back, neck, upper back, and shoulders as the most frequently affected in descending order. The major risk factors reported for WMSDs were: lifting, physical load, transferring, static and awkward static postures, treating a large number of patients per day, and repetitive movements. WMSDs were reported to be associated with age, gender, and physical activity levels, with a higher prevalence in female PTs. Also the younger PTs and PTs with lower physical activity levels were reported to be more affected.

It was inferred that the work-related injuries are not prevented by the knowledge about cor rect body mechanics and skills. PTs need to develop work modification strategies and mechanical aids to reduce WMSDs in without compromising the quality of treatment.

Pollution from electromagnetic radiation has caused widespread concern and some of its health effects have not yet been proven. On the other hand, as electronic information technology advances, electromagnetic radiation emission is rising and becoming more serious. Therefore, the evolution of new electromagnetic interference shielding materials with excellent performance is crucial. Around the world, researchers are also looking for new materials and innovations to use in the manufacture of electromagnetic shields. Metal composites have the best EMI protection, but they have disadvantages including high weight density, low flexibility, low corrosion resistance, and high surface reflection (1). Polymer composites have properties such as lightness, excellent corrosion resistance and chemical resistance (2). The comparison between high protective efficiency and cost-effective implementation, on the other hand, is not yet well-balanced. We believe that repurposing waste and enhancing its resistance to electromagnetic waves is a smart way to save materials and resources. The “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” waste hierarchy includes recycling as a crucial aspect (3). Zeng et al. in 2020 and Vazhayal et al. in 2020, Ma et al. in 2019 referred to the term "waste to wealth" in their articles on Electromagnetic Interference Shielding (4-6). Therefore, research can still be done in this direction. According to research, waste-based composites appear to be environmentally friendly, cost-effective, inexpensive and suitable for mass production. Finally, as the Executive Director of AOH joural, I request the authors to submit their research papers in this field for publication in this journal.

Considering the reported positive effects of risk management practices and monitoring them by conducting risk assessments and achieving safety improvements, this study was conducted to assess the risks in the educational laboratories of Qom University of Medical Sciences.

This cross- sectional study was conducted in 13 medical and paramedical educational laboratories. To assess safety conditions in the laboratories, a comprehensive safety checklist was developed and in order to assess the risks of laboratories, a method called FMEA was used. Two trained occupational health and safety experts evaluated the laboratories under study and identified the hazards, completed the relevant checklists, and subsequently ranked them based on severity, occurrence and detection. Finally, a comparison was made based on the calculated Risk Priority Number (RPN) for each hazard.

In general, fire hazards and electrical hazards 54% of the laboratories have been accompanied normal risk (RPN< 70) and nearly 8% of the laboratories had critical fire and electrical risks including chemistry and immunology laboratories. In the case of equipment hazards, nearly 60% of the laboratories had critical or semi-critical risk levels. it is indicated that health exposure hazards were the most important hazards compared to the other ones. So that 61.5% of the laboratories had critical risk and 15.3 % of them categorized as semi- critical risk. The highest RPN allocated to the biochemistry and chemistry laboratories (RPN>250).

The results of this study showed that in general, three types of hazards, including health hazards, equipment and material storage, should be given priority.

One of the major topics related to the very long tunnels is dark hole effect. This is a common phenomenon caused by the sunlight reflected from the surroundings of the tunnel to the eyes of drivers and the lack of sufficient light at the tunnelschr('39') entrance, which decreases the contrast of barriers inside the tunnel and also makes it difficult to see potential obstacles at the entrance. The result is an increased risk of traffic accidents in these tunnels. Therefore, the aim of this research is to subjectively assessment the safe rate of lighting in one of the very long tunnels located in the province of Ilam.

To subject evaluation the safe rate of lighting at the tunnel entrances, two parameters of the average luminance of tunnel entrance and equivalent luminance are required. In this study, Luminancemeter device model S3 was used to measure the average luminance of tunnel entrance. Then, to calculate the equivalent luminance, a YASHICA108 camera with a 35 mm lens was photographed at a distance between the tunnel entrance and a safe stopping point, and then the Holliday polar diagram was used to calculate equivalent luminance (accordance with the standard CIE88-2004).

In this study, the average luminance at tunnelchr('39')s entrance was equal to 17 , the luminance was equal to 127.5  Using the ADRENAL equation, the quality of lightening at the tunnel entrance was less than 1.

Comparison of the results obtained from the healthy and safety rate of lighting levels at the tunnelchr('39')s entrance with the De Boer mental scale indicated that a dark hole effect occurs at the entrance of the tunnel under investigation and the light sources installed at the entrance of this tunnel did not have the sufficient ability to inhibit the dark hole effect.

With accident investigation in industries can be concluded that a significant proportion of work-related accidents occurred in construction industry. In every year, 60.000 fatal accidents occur worldwide in construction sector and one worker dies because of an occupational accident in every 10 minutes. Safety risk identification and risk assessment in the industry is the essential element of risk management program. Except of financial loss, other aspect of political, socio-economic and cultural prospective of accidents must be considered for companies.

In this study, methodological shortcoming of traditional failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method and need to prioritize control measures, has been modified by analytical hierarchy of process (AHP). The FMEA used to risk identification and risk assessment in the elevated highway construction project, then using AHP accidents prioritized according to their physical, psychological, economic and socio-political burden.

In analytical hierarchy of process structure several sub-criteria for each criterion considered and weighted for each item. The five activities included crane collapse, crane collapsed, falling from height, collapse and electrocution devices that their risk priority number is more than 250 are weighted by analytical hierarchy of process.

based on literature the traditional FMEA has lots of shortcoming that it is needed to correct with other methods. This the findings of this study showed that in urban projects hazards threatening workers, citizens and company properties. Beside accidents death and injuries, they have negative consequences such as health, psychological, economical Socio – political impact. Accidents cause loss of human life; worker psychological problems, loss of worker`s productivity, damages to equipment or property and furthermore influence the organization`s reputation and profit. The conventional risk priority number (RPN) in FMEA method has been criticized to have many deficiencies and various risk priority models have been proposed to enhance the performance of FMEA in risk analysis. 
 

The risk management in construction in urban area greatly will identify the project hazards and its negative consequents. In this study, a AHP method based FMEA developed to identify and prioritize safety risk assessment in elevated expressway construction showed that the accidents In addition to the risks to life, they have political, social and cultural consequences.

Chronic occupational exposure to noise is an unavoidable reality in the countrychr('39')s textile industry and even other countries. The aim of this study was to compare the sound pressure level in different parts of the textile industry in Yazd and in different parts of the textile industry.

This cross-sectional study was performed on 930 textile workers in Yazd. A questionnaire was used to obtain demographic information and how to use protective equipment. Then, to obtain the sound pressure level of each unit and device and to use the measurement principles, a calibrated sound level meter was used. Then the results were analyzed using SPSS Ver.29 software.

The participants in this study were 714 males and 216 females with a mean age of 35.27 and 33.63 years, respectively. Seven hundred fifty-six participants (81.29%) were exposed to sound pressure levels higher than 85 dB. Among the participants, only 18.39% of the people used a protective phone permanently. Except for factory E, with an average sound pressure level of 77.78 dB, the rest of the factories had an average sound pressure level higher than the occupational exposure limit. The sound measurement results of different devices show that the sound pressure levels above 90 dB are related to the parts of Dolatab, Ring, Kinetting (knitting), Chanel, Autoconer, Dolakni, Open End, MultiLakni, Tabandegi, Texture, and Poy.

Based on the results of the present study, noise above 90 dB is considered as one of the main risk factors in most parts of the textile industry (spinning and weaving), which in the absence of engineering, managerial or individual controls on it causes hearing loss in becoming employees of this industry.

Bakery workers, Beacause of their nature, are at risk of musculoskeletal disorders caused by ergonomic factors. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the biomechanical risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders in bakery workers.

In the current study, all tasks of sangak, taftoon, and lavash bakery in Gonabad were selected based on the census method. Next, Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) method was used for task analysis, and the job was degraded to tasks, actions, and movements. For the following step, the ART and OCRA method was implemented to identify common risk factors in repetitive tasks that can contribute to developing musculoskeletal disorders of upper limbs. Analysis of the results in this study was performed using SPSS 17.

According to the results study, the ART and OCRA index score for shater and chonegir tasks for all three kinds of bakeries is at high risk (red zone). In ART index score of arm movements, repetition, force, head/neck posture, and back posture for shater and choonegir task in lavash and taftoon bakery and shater task in sangak bakery is in its maximum levels. This reflects the level of red risk and indicates that in these tasks, fast arm movements, repetition, force, head/neck posture, and back posture are recognized as major occupational risk factors in these tasks.

The results showed that the risk of musculoskeletal disorders owing to repetitive tasks is relatively high in the bakery and ergonomic interventions are required to redesign the job. This study shows the use of the ART method as a practical, applicable, easy, and convenient method for evaluation and ergonomics interventions in repetitive work tasks.

An effective process for preventing industrial accidents basically requires a thorough study of the environment, data collection, evaluation, and analysis of this information, determination of corrective action, and its implementation. Risk management provides an integrated framework for this important process. The purpose of this study was to identify the parameters of the risk management process, combine these parameters by fuzzy logic and construct a fuzzy model to obtain the risk management index and finally design a questionnaire with Likert scale to obtain the inputs of this model to evaluate the risk management process.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 2018 in Tehran. First, based on library studies and expertschr('39') opinions, Jaques non-linear crisis management model was selected, and based on this model, the parameters of the risk management process were extracted. Then, a questionnaire with 22 questions was designed to measure these parameters, the content and face validity of which were evaluated. Also, to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire, the test-retest method and Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient were used. Then the parameters were defined as fuzzy numbers, the Fuzzy inference engine was programmed using fuzzy rules, and its validity was evaluated.

The fuzzy model has three stages, in each of which sixteen rules are used. In this fuzzy model, the defuzzification step was performed by four methods with the same results. The designed questionnaire contains twenty-two questions, the content validity ratio (CVR) for this questionnaire is 0.89, and the content validity index (CVI) for all questions was above 0.79. Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient for this questionnaire was 0.713. Face validity was determined quantitatively by calculating the impact score (more than 1.5). Using intraclass correlation coefficient and Pearson correlation coefficient, the existence of reliability between test times (test-retest) was confirmed, so that their values were 0.84 and 0.88%, respectively.

The proposed fuzzy model has a high validity giving a correct evaluation of the risk management process and expressing the final result in the form of an index between zero and one hundred. The risk management process evaluation questionnaire has good validity and reliability with the interpretation that the item has good face validity and is understandable, simple, and fluent for the sample group. Using this tool, industry managers can evaluate the safety risk management process, making them able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of this process, and finally take steps to eliminate the defects and improve this process continuously.