The High-risk Groups According to the Trends and Characteristics of Fatal Occupational Injuries in Korean Workers Aged 50 Years and Above

BACKGROUND: Due to an increasing number of workers aged 50 years and above, the number of those employed is also on the rise, and those workers aged 50 and over has exceeded 50% of the total fatal occupational injuries. Therefore, it is necessary to implement the selection and concentration by identifying the characteristics of high-risk groups necessary for an effective prevention against and reduction of fatal occupational injuries. METHODS: This study analyzed the characteristics of high-risk groups and the occupational injury fatality rate per 10,000 workers among the workers aged 50 and over through a multi-dimensional analysis by sex, employment status of workers, industry and occupation by targeting 4,079 persons who died in fatal occupational injuries from January 2007 to December 12. RESULTS: The share of the workers aged 50 years and above is increasing every year in the total fatal occupational injuries occurrence, and the high-risk groups include 'male workers' by sex, ‘daily workers’ by worker’s status, ‘craft and related-trades workers’ by occupation, and ‘mining’ by industry. CONCLUSION: The most frequent causal objects of fatal occupational injuries of the workers aged 50 years and above are found out to be ‘installment and dismantlement of temporary equipment and material on work platforms including scaffold’ in the construction industry and ‘mobile crane, conveyor belt and fork lifts’ in the manufacturing industry.

A Policy Intervention Study to Identify High-Risk Groups to Prevent Industrial Accidents in Republic of Korea

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study is to identify high-risk groups for industrial accidents by setting up 2003 as the base year and conducting an in-depth analysis of the trends of major industrial accident indexes the index of industrial accident rate, the index of occupational injury rate, the index of occupational illness and disease rate per 10,000 people, and the index of occupational injury fatality rate per 10,000 people for the past 10 years. METHODS: This study selected industrial accident victims, who died or received more than 4 days of medical care benefits, due to occupational accidents and diseases occurring at workplaces, subject to the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, as the study population. RESULTS: According to the trends of four major indexes by workplace characteristics, the whole industry has shown a decreasing tendency in all four major indexes since the base year (2003); as of 2012, the index of industrial accident rate was 67, while the index of occupational injury fatality rate per 10,000 people was 59. CONCLUSION: The manufacturing industry, age over 50 years and workplaces with more than 50 employees showed a high severity level of occupational accidents. Male workers showed a higher severity level of occupational accidents than female workers. The employment period of < 3 years and newly hired workers with a relatively shorter working period are likely to have more occupational accidents than others. Overall, an industrial accident prevention policy must be established by concentrating all available resources and capacities of these high-risk groups.

Relationship between Comorbid Health Problems and Musculoskeletal Disorders Resulting in Musculoskeletal Complaints and Musculoskeletal Sickness Absence among Employees in Korea

BACKGROUND: To investigate the relationship between musculoskeletal disorders and comorbid health problems, including depression/anxiety disorder, insomnia/sleep disorder, fatigue, and injury by accident, and to determine whether certain physical and psychological factors reduce comorbid health problems. METHODS: In total, 29,711 employees were selected from respondents of the Third Korean Working Conditions Survey and categorized into two groups: Musculoskeletal Complaints or Musculoskeletal Sickness Absence. Four self-reported health indicators (overall fatigue, depression/anxiety, insomnia/sleep disorder, and injury by accident) were selected as outcomes, based on their high prevalence in Korea. We used multiple logistic regression analysis to determine the relationship between comorbid health problems, musculoskeletal complaints, and sickness absence. RESULTS: The prevalence of musculoskeletal complaints and musculoskeletal sickness absence due to muscular pain was 32.26% and 0.59%, respectively. Compared to the reference group, depression/anxiety disorder and overall fatigue were 5.2-6.1 times more prevalent in the Musculoskeletal Complaints Group and insomnia/sleep disorder and injury by accident were 7.6-11.0 times more prevalent in the Sickness Absence Group. When adjusted for individual and work-related physical factors, prevalence of all four comorbid health problems were slightly decreased in both groups. CONCLUSION: Increases in overall fatigue and depression/anxiety disorder were observed in the Musculoskeletal Complaints Group, while increases in insomnia/sleep disorder and injury by accident were observed in the Sickness Absence Group. For management of musculoskeletal complaints and sickness absence in the workplace, differences in health problems between employees with musculoskeletal complaints and those with sickness absence as well as the physical and psychological risk factors should be considered.

An Empirical Analysis on Labor Unions and Occupational Safety and Health Committees' Activity, and Their Relation to the Changes in Occupational Injury and Illness Rate

OBJECTIVES: To find out from an analysis of empirical data the levels of influence, which a labor union (LU) and Occupational Safety and Health Committee (OSHC) have in reducing the occupational injury and illness rate (OIIR) through their accident prevention activities in manufacturing industries with five or more employees. METHODS: The empirical data used in this study are the Occupational Safety and Health Tendency survey data, Occupational Accident Compensation data and labor productivity and sales data for the years 2003 to 2007. By matching these three sources of data, a final data set (n = 280) was developed and analyzed using SPSS version 18 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). RESULTS: It was found that a workplace with a LU has a lower OIIR than one without a LU. In manufacturing industries with five or more employees in 2007, the OIIR of the workplaces without a LU was 0.87%, while that of workplaces with a LU was much lower at 0.45%. In addition, workplaces with an established OSHC had a lower OIIR than those without an OSHC. CONCLUSION: It was found that the OIIR of workplaces with a LU is lower than those without a LU. Moreover, those with the OSHC usually had a lower OIIR than those without. The workplace OIIR may have an impact on management performance because the rate is negatively correlated with labor productivity and sales. In the long run, the OIIR of workplaces will be reduced when workers and employers join forces and recognize that the safety and health activities of the workplace are necessary, not only for securing the health rights of the workers, but also for raising labor productivity.

Relationship between Injury Occurrence and Workplace Organization in Small-sized Manufacturing Factories / 대한산업의학회지

OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated the relationship between injury occurrence and workplace organization in small-sized, manufacturing factories in Korea. METHODS: Using data from the 2004 Occupational Safety and Health Survey in Korea, this study compared workplace organizational factors (general characteristics, employee characteristics and health and safety characteristics) with injury occurrence of 1,866 small-sized, manufacturing factories (65,921 population factories after weighting). General characteristics of factories comprised location, type and classification of industry. Employee characteristics comprised proportion of manual workers and female workers, average working hours per week and shiftwork. Health and safety characteristics comprised type of safety and health manager, committee for occupational safety and health, labor union, health and safety regulation, monthly health and safety training time, score of health and safety activity and score of safety culture. RESULTS: The following characteristics of injury-occurrence in small-sized, manufacturing factories were determined by multivariate analysis. In terms of general characteristics, the risk of injury-occurrence was higher in Jeolla area than Gyeongin area in outside associate than other enterprises and in coke, refined petroleum products and nuclear fuel, wood and products of wood, food products and beverages and fabricated metal products, except machinery and furniture industries than television and communication equipment and apparatus industries. In terms of employee characteristics, injury-occurrence significantly increased in factories with greater proportion of manual worker and with a higher rate of working hours per week. But significantly decreased in factories with a higher proportion of female workers. In terms of health and safety characteristics, injury-occurrence significantly increased in factories with a self-appointed safety manager, with unorganized union, with a more active committee for occupational safety and health, with unimplemented health and safety regulations, with longer monthly safety and health training time, and with a lower score of safety culture. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that several factors of workplace organization were significantly related with injury-occurrence in factories. These findings are supposed to raise the need for making efforts in workplace organization to improve injury prevention.

The Prediction Model of the Number of Industrial Injured Persons Using Data Mining / 대한산업의학회지

OBJECTIVES: This study is to see the transition and pattern of the industrial iureal worker, and to develop the prediction model. METHODS: The data of the study are based on the samples from data-warehouse of Occupational Safety & Health Research Institute and are summed monthly from Jan 1986 to Dec 1999. This study data used data mart and Meta data from DW in KOSHA. The prediction model of the injured worker in Industry is designed by using a winters time series method after data preparing (i. e. sample, explore, modify) from DW. RESULTS: Thls predicted model obtained Winters-method multiplicative in exponential smoothing among applied all models, after the tlme series (total 163 months). It showed that the prediction power was 95.5 %. CONCLUSIONS: In the process of exploring the data, totally the rate of industrial injureal workers reduced, and in the yearly circulation, in February and September the number is the lowest but in June, July, October and November the higher. The number of monthly average injureal workers is 8709 (95 % confidence interval 8277, 9140). From the developed prediction model, since Aug 1999 the industrial injureal worker reduced rapidly in Dec 1999 and first period of 2000. But In second period of 2000 the number of the injured workers is increasing. To conclude, as the total economic situation is becoming better in 2000 than In 1999, its is supposed that the injured workers will increase more than the predictive injured workers because of the increase of production rate and labor force.

A study on the attitude affecting the preventive behavior for hearing conservation / 예방의학회지

The purpose of this study is to investigate attitude factor related to hearing conservation and to find attitude affecting the preventive behavior for hearing conservation. The research method used in this study was self-administered questionnaire samples of the study were composed of 353 workers exposed noise selected randomly in 10 ship-building manufacturing companies. Authors extracted following 9 factors related hearing conservation from 26 attitude propositions prepared from previous study results and health belief model; (l) general perceived susceptibility, (2) relative perceived susceptibility compared with colleagues, (3) concern to the personal protective devices, (4) perceived severity and concern to the hearing capacity, (5) concern to the hearing and noise assessment, (6) concern to the control noise and hearing conservation, (7) group pressure and reason of wearing protective devices, (8) apathy of hearing loss from noise, (9) knowledge about hearing conservation Attitude factors affecting the preventive health behavior were general perceived susceptibility, concern to the noise control and hearing conservation, and concern to the personal protective devices in the case of wearing personal protective devices. But in the case of avoiding noise exposure as preventive health behavior, perceived severity and concern to the hearing capacity was a significant attitude factor with knowledge about hearing conservation.

The Geographic Patterns of The Adult Male Bladder Cancer Patients in Korea: Clue as to the Occupational Exposure / 한국역학회지

We calculated the age specific Proportionate Morbidity Ratio(PMR)' for different areas as the outcome index by using the national cancer registry data(1988 1991) to assess the patterns of stomach cancer and bladder cancer. Also, we calculated 'Manufacturing workers Concentration Index(MCI)' for different areas as the exposure index by using the census data reported in 1980 to assess the relationship between cancer site specific PMRs and MCIs. As a result, we found the significant correlation(r=0.61, p=0.002) between the bladder cancer in the age of 40s and the industrial exposure indicator. Future analytic studies should be fruitful in identifying more occupational risk factors for bladder cancer. Investigation of cancer incidence including geographic variations and difference by age may identify patterns suggesting occupational exposures.

Shiftwork and Sickness Absence in Korean Manufacturing Industries / 예방의학회지

In order to provide necessary information for better health of workers through understanding the actual status of the industries adopting shift systems. The data were gathered from a stratified random sample of 347(0.5%) firms selected out of about 70,000 manufacturing industries throughout the nation in 1993 stratification during sampling was by industrial group and number of workers. The major findings obtained from 288 firms surveyed completely were as follows: 1. About 20.2% of the 288 firms were adopting shift systems and shiftworkers accounted for about 25.1% of the total work force in 288 firms. 2. The bigger number of workers was, the higher the adopting rate of shift system was. 3. The rate of having welfare facilities such as dining room, commuting bus, washing facilities, and health care room etc. was higher in the industries adopting shift systems. 4. The major industrial groups adopting shift systems were the rubber & plastic goods manufacturing industry (54.1 per 100 firms) and the textile manufacturing industry (44.8 per 100 firms). However the proportion of shiftworkers was higher in the textile manufacturing industry (70.5 per 100 firms) and the electronics industry (57.9 per 100 firms). 5. The most predominant work schedule was the weekly rotating, semi-continuos 2-crew 2-shift system (47.5%). 6. In the industries adopting shift systems, shiftworkefs had an adjusted average of 0.29 spells per 100 workers (O.14-0.45 in 95% C.I) compared to 0.23 spells per 100 nonshift dayworkers (0.15-0.31 in 95% C.I) for 1 month. 7. Also in the industries adopting shift systems, the adjusted average annual turn-over rate of shiftworkers was 13.07 per 100 workers (12.03-14.12 in 95% C.I) compared to 10.18 per 100 nonshift dayworkers(9.53-10.82 in 95% C.I).