دو ماهنامه سلامت کار ایران
سال دهم شماره 5 (آذر و دی 1392)

Participatory ergonomics is the concept of active participation of all components of an organization in the development and implementation of ergonomics knowledge in order to enhance the working environment, quality, productivity and safety of that organization. One of the main goals of participatory ergonomics is increasing employee's satisfaction and changing the workplace into an appropriate environment with minimal health and safety risks. This study aims to investigate the impact to implementing participatory ergonomics on the quality of worker's work life.

This interventional descriptive and analytical study has been carried out in one of the steel making companies of Iran during 2010-2011. In this study participatory ergonomics has been implemented in several stages. Evaluating the participant's quality of work life was performed using NIOSH quality of work life questionnaire before and after the intervention. For statistical analysis SPSS 16 for Windows was used and descriptive statistics and paired t-test was performed.

Although staff's quality of work life according to their average score of questionnaires was ranked in good level either before and after implementation of the participation ergonomics, results of paired T-test analysis showed a statistically significant improvement in the quality of working conditions of workers following such intervention (P<0/001).

Enhancement in the quality of work life has a considerable effect on achieving the goal of worker's health promotion and reducing accidents, and implementation of participatory ergonomics with cooperation of industry leaders can be considered as an effective step toward achieving worker's health and satisfaction.

Many systems and processes can cause the introduction of radioactivity into the environment. Human activities in nuclear industry such as nuclear fuel cycle and reactor operation, lead to a significant production and release of radioactivity to the environment. Understanding the physical and chemical nature, including size, chemical composition and radioactivity of aerosol particles in the safety chamber of Tehran research reactor is indispensable for evaluation of exposure level and methods of prevention. The aim of this study was to measure the size distribution of aerosols and their activities, which was determined using an Anderson cascade Impactor (ACI) ACFM model and liquid scintillation respectively. The measurements were performed in three workstations in the safety chamber of Tehran research reactor.

The identification of existing radio nuclides on suspended particles were carried out in the safety chamber by means of environmental sampler and mass size distribution of particles was measured using an Anderson cascade Impactor (ACI). To determine the type and amount of radio nuclides in the aerosol particles the γ-ray spectrometry with a high –purity germanium (HPGe) detector and ultra-low level liquid scintillation spectrometer were used respectively.

The results showed that the activities median aerodynamic diameter (AMAD) value for three selected workstations were 2.4, 3.1 and 3µm with geometric standard deviation of 2.3, 2.12 and 2 respectively. Furthermore, the results of particle activity size distribution showed that the most fraction of activity was related to nucleation and accumulation mode, especially particles with the aerodynamic diameter less than 0.4µm.

The most activity was related to the number of particles in the accumulation and nucleation mode (fine particles). The origin of these particles can be the coagulation of particles in the nucleation mode. The accumulation mode also contains droplets formed by the chemical conversion of gases to vapors that condense.