IRAN OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH JOURNAL
Year:2007 | Volume:4 | Issue:1-2|Papers Count:13

Background and Aims: Occupational accidents are one of the main health and economic problems of developing countries including Iran. Death due to occupational accidents causes significant economic losts and hardware losses.Methods: This research performed in Tehran province in 2002. The subjects included all of people insured which their death was due to occupational accident. The Excel software package was used for data analysis.Results: 231 fatal occupational accidents happened in Tehran over three years research. This research showed that 7552 years of life and more than 777 billion Rails has been lost because of the occurrence of occupational accidents.Conclusion: According to current research, to decrease the occupational accidents risk, implementation of a comprehensive recording and reporting system and using of proactive safety approach is necessary.

Background and Aims: Permit to work (PTW) system as an operational control methods, is an accepted system for control of maintenance activities hazards in chemical industries. The main objective of this study was degree of conformity analysis between existing situation of PTW system and audit criteria.Methods: In this cross - sectional study, PTW system was audited in an oil and gas extracting industry by checklist.Results :Major nonconformities include outdating of system legal and regulation, non existence of permit for majority of dangerous activities, unidentified training needs, incomplete identification and risk assessment of maintenance hazards before doing them, unspecified inspection and survey frequencies during works and nonexistence of scheduled auditing for the system.Conclusion: PTW audit results showed that there is a noticeable gap between audit criteria and audit evidences. So that the examined system had nonconformities in all of the checklist sections; system, training and competency, permit, coordination and monitoring.

Background and Aims: Musculoskeletal Disorders are prevalent in construction workers in comparison to other working groups. This study was done to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders in four construction sites.Methods: This study which has been done in Orumieh city in first six month grade of 1385 is a descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study. For 89 construction workers questionnaires were completed. Nordic standard questionnaire was used in study.Results: The higher (50.6%) and lowest (1.1%) prevalence rate were in low back and foot, respectively .Following low back, wrist (43.8%) and shoulder (40.4%) have the highest prevalence rate. There is a significant relation among neck, wrist, low back and knee with age and experience of workers (P <0.05).The chance of neck, wrist and low back incidence is increasing with age.Conclusion: The results of this study reveal that the prevalence rate of Musculoskeletal Disorders is high in construction workers. Probably, the high prevalence of these disorders is due to non neutral postures, repetitive motions, manual material handling and the weight of used tools and objects. Therefore, ergonomics interventions in order to correction of awkward working posture, reducing working time and handled materials and tools weights modification in order to decreasing these disorders prevalence are suggested.

Background and Aims: There has been a continuing concern that the inhalation of fumes by welders when stainless steel is welded could give rise to cancers, particularly lung cancer. This fear is based on the chemical composition of the fumes, especially hexavalent chromium. Welding fumes and hexavalent chromium emission may be minimized by selection of appropriate welding parameters.Method:In this study the effects of operational parameters such as electrode diameter, type of base metal, electrode chromium and flow of shielding gas was studied on emission of hexavalent chromium in two types of stainless steel welding process (SMAWand GTAW).Results: We found that the emission of hexavalent chromium in SMAW was significantly higher than GTAWprocess (P<0.05). In both of welding process, the type of electrode has a meaningful effect on emission of hexavalent chromium (P<0.05).Conclusion:Our results show that the base metal plays a little role in the formation of particulate fume. There was no difference between emissions of hexavalent chromium in two type of studied base metals as well as two type of electrode diameter (P>0.05). Increase in flow of shielding gas in GTAWhas no effect on formation and emission of hexavalent chromium (P>0.05).

Background and Aims: Biological hazards exist throughout all healthcare settings and include airborne and blood borne pathogens. Health care workers are also subject to exposure to hazardous chemicals such as disinfectants and sterilizing agents. In addition to the traditional aforementioned categories of occupational hazards, health care workers experience the stress of being directly responsible for the care of very sick and dying patients, which, coupled with increasing workloads, can seriously threaten their health and well-being.Methods: The study population was all hospital staff (# 207), of whom198 health care workers eventually participated in the study. The questionnaires were administered to doctors, nurses and ward orderlies in Shahid Sadoughi Teaching Hospital Yazd, Iran. Data were analyzed by SPSS 11.5 software using Fisher's exact and Chi square tests.Results:The common occupational health hazards were work-related stress (60.1%), bloodstains on skin (51%), needle-stick injuries (42.9%), assault from patients (21.2%), skin reaction (19.2%), sleep disturbance (15.2%), stew blood on mucosal (3.1%) and use of drugs (4.5%). Nearly 4.5% of the staff used tranquilizers to cope with the work stress. A greater percentage of doctors compared to nurses and ward orderlies used safety precautions such as gloves, facemasks and aprons. 70.2% staff employed regular hand-washing after various procedures 68.2% of staff adopted regularly proper disposal of needles and sharps into separate puncture resistant containers. About 55.6% of the staff recap used needles.Conclusion : In according to frequent types of occupational related dangers, corporation between chiefs and members of health care center to decrease these seems wishful and we recommend preparing and distributing necessary guidelines with related awareness among these groups.

Exposure to occupational and environmental contaminants is a major contributor to human health problems. Despite significant achievements in the risk assessment of chemicals, the toxicological database, particularly for industrial chemicals, remains limited. Considering there are approximately 80, 000 chemicals in commerce, and an extremely large number of chemical mixtures, in vivo testing of this large number is unachievable from ethical, economical and scientific perspectives. Therefore, increasing the number of available industrial chemicals and new products has created a demand for alternatives to animal methods for better safety evaluation. Recent toxicity studies have demonstrated that in vitro methods are capable of rapidly providing toxicity information. In this review, current toxicity test methods for risk evaluation of industrial chemical contaminants are presented. To evaluate the potential applications of in vitro methods, more recent test methods developed for toxicity testing of chemical contaminants are discussed. Although in vitro toxicology methods cannot exactly mimic the biodynamics of the whole body, in vitro test systems in combination with the knowledge of quantitative structure activity relationships (QSARs) and physiologically based toxicokinetic (PBTK) models have a potential to be considered more broadly for risk assessment of human chemical exposures.

Background and Aim: Epidemiologic data of LBP and NSP are sparse from developing countries for example Iran. This prospective cohort study was conducted with 1 year follow - up to assess incidence and recurrence of disabling low back (LBP) and neck-shoulder pain (NSP) in Iran khodro industrial group .and to investigate the association with sex and job title during follow- up.Methods: All employees (18.031) were invited to participate in a baseline survey Nordic questionnaire and followed for 1 year regarding new episodes of sickness absence due to LBP or NSP (disabling pain).Results: The 1- year incidence LBP was 2.1% and of NSP 0.1%, although the prevalence of LBP in females was higher than in males. The incidence disabling LBP were higher in males. Both prevalence and incidence of disabling LBP were high in unskilled workers. For NSP managers had the highest reported prevalence, but incident cases happened only among office workers and unskilled workers.Conclusion: The incidence, especially for NSP is much lower than from developed countries. To study prevalence, incidence and recurrence of LBP and NSP simultaneously leads to a better understanding of the natural pattern and distribution of LBP and NSP in a working population.

Background and Aim: The oxides of sulphur are among those chemical substances that are increasingly used and their consumption is even growing in different places every day. Sulphur oxides are used in chemical industries, paper manufacturing, printing rollers, recovering burned (consumed) coal, supplying and producing sulphuric acid, and in bleaching liquids. Determination and evaluation of the accumulation rate of sulphor oxides and sulphoric acid mists through personal breathing zone, and sources emission from occupational areas of the petrochemical complex.Methods: Sampling (NO=32) was done from the working places and ambient using ASTM D4490 method for the measurement of source pollutants and the standard method of NIOSH. Appendix VIII for pollutants measurement of the breathing zone. Measurement and evaluation of the samples from the occupational areas were performed during the two working shifts (morning and the afternoon) at the ground floor and the first floor of the building.Results: The average concentrations for sulphur dioxides at the ground floor over the working time of both shifts (in the morning and in the afternoon) were 0.011 PPM and 0. 015 PPM, respectively. In addition, the average concentrations for the same shifts at the first floor of the building were 0.019PPM and 0.014PPM, respectively. The average concentrations of sulphuric acid mists at the ground floor for the morning and afternoon shifts were 0.36 mg/m3 and 1.47 mg/m3 and at the first floor they were 0.66 mg/m3 and 1.35 mg/m3, respectively. The results of measurements for sulphur dioxides gas revealed that contact with this gas in the Units of 300 and 600 was less than the permitted limit from NIOSH for the exposed workers to permissible exposure limit contacts (PEL TWA= 2PPM). Further, the rate of working contact had a significant correlation with each of the indicators of both shifts and the place where this contact occurred (P<0.001).The measurement results of sulphoric acid mists also revealed that the rate of contact with the mists for the workers being exposed to the gas in the Units of 300 and 600 in the morning shift was less and in the afternoon shift was more than the permissible limit from NIOSH (PEL TWA= 1 mg/m3). In addition, the rate of working contact with sulphoric acid mists in terms of the working time and place showed a significant correlation (P<0.001).Conclusion: , It is concluded that the assumption " the amount of sulphur dioxides is beyond PEL in the breathing zone of workers "is disproved; and also the assumption that" the rate of sulphuric acid mist concentration is more than the permissible limit in the workers breathing zone in the afternoon shift is confirmed while in the morning shift is disproved.

Background and Aim: Shift work is an inevitable result of technology usage and considered as an occupational hazard. It is known as an old problem among health care workers, which affects their wellbeing adversely. Operation room technicians (ORTs) are among those health care workers who are required to work in shift system and encountered shift work-related problems. This study was conducted among ORTs of Shiraz University Of Medical Sciences (SUMS) hospitals with the aim of determination of shift work-related health, family and social problems.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, SOS (survey of shift workers) questionnaire was used to collect required data. Study population included all ORTs of SUMS hospitals in 2006-2007. Totally, 178 ORTs from 9 SUMS hospitals were studied.Results:The results showed that shift work-related problems occurred in high rate among ORTs. Personal (subjective), gastrointestinal and social problems were found to be the most prevalent problems among the ORTs (97.6%, 70.7% and 66.5%, respectively). The results revealed that ORTs who chose shift work voluntarily had higher rate of job satisfaction. It was also found that regular rotating shift schedule caused more job satisfaction than irregular rotating shift schedule did. There was an association between job satisfaction and the prevalence of reported problems such that the prevalence rate of problems was lower among those with higher rate of job satisfaction (P<0.05). This study demonstrated that there was no regular, definite shift system in operating rooms of the 9 SUMS hospital studied.Conclusion:Working in shift system voluntarily and regular schedule caused higher rate of job satisfaction. Higher job satisfaction resulted in less shift work-related problems.