Introduction: Safety signs are considered as visual intermediates for message transmission, which play a crucial role in reducing accidents particularly in petrochemical industries. These signs are effective if designed in compliance with ergonomic principles and based on human factors and cognitive design features. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the psychological effects of safety signs in transmitting message given their design features in a petrochemical industry.Materials and Methods: This descriptive-cross-sectional study was performed on 100 employees in Mahshahr Petrochemical Complex. A-two part questionnaire was used to collect data; the first part about demographic information and the second part about designing features of signs (familiarity, concreteness, simplicity, meaningfulness and semantic closeness).Results: Cognitive design features included familiarity and semantic closeness with a mean of 49.15 and 66.78, respectively. Factors of work experience, age, and academic level had no significant effect on guessing the meaning of signs (p> 0.05).Conclusion: There was no significant association between cognitive features of signs and message transmission. Message transmission of safety signs was affected by other features rather than their design. Therefore, to improve individuals’ awareness about familiarity with particular meaning of signs, ergonomic design of safety signs together with proper training are proposed.

Aims: The increasing fashion of development and the use of modern and sophisticated technology, despite several benefits, causes numerous problems in the field of health and safety; from which, the most important one is the increase in the rate of accidents and occupational diseases. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the unsafe behaviors among a defense industry staffs in Iran and assess the role of warning signs in reduction of mentioned behaviors.Methods: This intervention study was carried out in one of the defense industries in Iran. At the first stage, using safety behavior sampling technique, behavior of 623 staffs working at studied unit was evaluated. At the second stage, after analysis of collected data, the frequency of each unsafe behavior and their proportion in the whole unsafe behaviors was obtained and then their probable relationships with some demographic features were investigated. Safety behaviors were calculated before and after (2 & 4 months) installation of standard safety signs (ANSI).Results: Before intervention, 52.1% of behaviors were unsafe. The most frequent ones were the abuse or lack of the use of personal protective equipments, inappropriate postures and incorrect use of manual tools. However, after 2 and 4 months from intervention, unsafe behaviors rate reduced to 33.2 and 38.7%, respectively. Conclusion: The use of safety signs has significant impact on reducing unsafe behaviors in staffs; however, its effectiveness is reduced over the time.

Background: Schizophrenia is one of the most important and disabling mental disorders in the world. Males and females are equally affected. Diagnosis is a very difficult problem in this disorder. Because the diagnostic systems such as ICD-IO and DSM-IV are mainly subjective, they are not valid and reliable. Essentially, in the future, we will need to more objective criteria in psychiatry especially in diagnosis of schizophrenia. Neurological soft signs are an example of these objective criteria. In this study we evaluated the prevalence of neurological soft signs in schizophrenic patients and compared it with the prevalence of these signs in other psychotic patients (except mood disorders with psychotic features) and normal subjects. Methods: We compared the neurological soft signs (sensory motor integration, motor. Coordination, consequent complex motor acts, primary reflexes, and eye movements) in 30 schizophrenic patients, 30 other psychotic patients (other than mood disorders with psychotic features) and 30 normal subjects. Diagnosis of schizophrenia and also other psychoses were based on DSM-IN criteria. Normal subjects have been selected form the staff of Roozbeh hospital randomly. Results: The difference between the means of motor coordination subscale of neurological soft signs in schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders (other than mood disorders with psychotic features) were significant (P value<0.04). There were no significant differences between the means of other subscales of neurological soft signs in two groups of patients. Conclusion: There are some disturbances of motor coordination subscale of neurological soft signs in patients with schizophrenia. It seems that, these disturbances are evidence of involvements of basal ganglia, motor cerebral cortex, and cerebellum. So it may be suggested that motor coordination as a marker can be used in differentiation between the schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

Background and Objective: In recent decades studies have shown that the main cause of accidents is unsafe acts. Installation of safety signs is a complementary corrective action for unsafe act control. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to investgate the effects of safety signs on the modification of unsafe behaviours.Materials and Methods: This interventional study was carried out in one of the turbine manufacturing industries in Iran, based on safety behaviour sampling technique. The unsafe acts was first determined and recorded, then 71 standard safety signs was installed based on (ANSI -Z535.2 & 3-2007) and 3 and 6 months after that the behaviours were evaluated. The behaviours before and after using the safety signs were compared.Results: The frequency of unsafe behaviors was 41.7% before the intervention. The most frequent unsafe behaviours were not or incorrect use of personal protective equipments, taking improper postures and unsafe work at height. There and 6 months after the intervention, unsafe behaviours reduced to 27.3% and 31.3% respectively (p<0.005).Conclusion: The findings showed that safety signs have a statistically significant effect on the reduction of unsafe behaviours. However, this effectiveness will be reducing over the time.

Safety signs in the workplace are effective in the controlling of workplace hazards. Correct interpretation of signs is vital, preventing injury and saving lives. This study seeks to assess the perception of workplace safety signs and determine effective personal factors in comprehension. The current analytical-descriptive study was carried out in 2012 on 166 factory workers in 4 factories at the Khoramdasht and Bumehen industrial areas. Data was gathered using ISO 9186 and Demographic Information questionnaires. Stratified–random method was used for sampling and data were analyzed with Kendal statistical test using SPSS 16. General perception of safety signs was 69.22% with a standard deviation of 20.32%. Out of the 11 signs studied, the "eye protection must be worn" and "hand protection must be worn" signs had the highest effective perception and the "wear face shield" had the lowest. Results show a positive relationship between sign perception and factors such as age, experience and safety sign training (p£0.05). However a meaningful relationship between sign perception and gender was not observed. Acceptable perception of signs was 72.72% based on ISO 3864 and only 9% based on ANSI Z5353. Results show overall safety sign perception within the studied samples was low and few signs actually reach the perception limits. The contribution of personal factors on sign perception can be reduced by educating the work force on workplace safety signs.

Background and Purpose: Correct recognition of hazards in academic labs by using safety signs can prevent injuries in these settings. Although safety signs seem simple, misunderstanding them can put students at risk. Therefore, this research aims to assess the cognitive sign features and guessability of laboratory safety signs for pharmacy students. Materials and Methods: In this study, the comprehensibility of 22 commonly used safety signs was evaluated by 55 pharmacy students aged 20-30 years from Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Two measures of guessability score and cognitive sign features were used to assess the safety signs. The guessability score was measured by a five-choice answering method, where there were correct, partly correct, and wrong answers. Cognitive sign features (familiarity, concreteness, simplicity, meaningfulness, and semantic closeness) rated from 0 to 100. SPSS software, version 23 was applied for data analysis. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, box plots, and the Spearman correlation test. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The lowest guessability score was 1.08% for the “general mandatory action sign”, and the highest score was 100% for the “no smoking” sign. Despite the varying responses, two “general mandatory action” and “disconnect before carrying out maintenance or repair” signs had significantly scattered coefficients of variation. According to the overall scores for cognitive sign features, the simplicity criterion had the highest score (85.73%). All cognitive sign features significantly correlated with guessability scores except for concreteness and familiarity. The highest coefficient was reported between guessability score and semantic closeness (r=0.469, P<0.001). Conclusion: The lab safety signs without accompanying text or those that are not frequently encountered are difficult to be perceived correctly by pharmacy students.

Introduction: One of the methods of informing industrial workers about occupational hazards in the workplace is the use of safety signs, which are installed in the required places according to the type of workplace hazards. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the level of understanding of safety signs among industrial workers. Method: In this cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study, the level of understanding of safety signs was measured on 150 industrial workers in North Khorasan Province. The data were collected using the ISO 9186–1:2007 questionnaire and the American National Standards Institute ANSI Z535.5 criteria for understanding safety signs. After collection, the data were analyzed using SPSS 21 statistical software. Results: The results of the study showed that 52.6% of the subjects belonged to the age group of 31 to 50 years. The average level of understanding of safety signs was 15.78±15.20. The highest level of correct understanding was related to the "No Smoking" sign, while the lowest level was related to the "First Aid Kit" sign. The relationship between age, work experience, training, and level of education was significantly related to the level of understanding of safety signs (P< 0.05); however, no significant relationship was observed with shift work. Conclusion: The understanding of safety signs among industrial workers was at an acceptable level standard. It is necessary to design understandable safety signs with the themes of "Wear a face shield," "First aid kit," "Danger of toxic substances," and "Emergency exit."

Background and Objectives: One of the most important factors in traffic engineering is pedestrian crossing safety. Investigating the parameters affecting the pedestrian’ s safety margins and their relationship on the identifying the main causes of accidents relate to pedestrians on the streets without the traffic signs and driving has an important role. This article examine some of the factors related to the safety of pedestrians and the relationship between them. Materials and Methods: For this purpose، the videos were recorded of 56 pedestrians، were evaluated. This study was cross-sectional and conducted on the basis of observational data. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 21 software and linear regression method. Results: The results obtained from software has shown that the influence coefficients of various factors affecting pedestrian’ s safety margin that include waiting time before moving with 0. 78، repeat looking at the vehicles before and while crossing with 0. 58، looking time at the vehicles before and after passing with 0. 73 and passing time with 0. 29 Conclusion: In this case study that has been done in Tehran Motahari street، “ The pedestrians waiting time before passing “ were determined as the most important factor affecting the pedestrians safetymargin on the streets without traffic signals.

Introduction: In every time and place, accidents can cause damages or injuries to people, property, community and organization reputation. With respect to this point that accidents occurred in laboratories of our country, this study aimed to assess the hazards in laboratories and workshops of Isfahan University of Art and also the implementation of interventions to increase the safety level in these places.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. After initial evaluation of all workshops and laboratories of the Isfahan University of Art, 4 workshops and laboratories with high potential level of hazards were selected for further study. Then, for quantitative assessment of hazards made a 130-question assessment checklist was prepared based on OHSAS 18001. After performing quantitative assessment of hazards and prioritizing them based on the results of this evaluation, interventions were implemented to decrease hazards and increase the safety level. Finally, quantitative assessment repeated and efficacy of interventions has been identified.Results: Based on the quantitative assessment according to evaluation checklist score, the percentage of general hazards in target sites was 20.8 to 45.4 % (Mean = 35.5, SD=9.2). Lack of safety supplies, equipment and signs with 31% and deficiency of safety procedure with 26 % were the most important factors corresponding to evaluated safety risk levels. Two interventions were implemented, including designing and installing safety signs and safety training.Conclusion: After the educational and safety interventions, total hazards decreased from range of (%20.8-%45.4) to range of (%15.4-%32.3). According to the low cost of the implementing the interventions, the mean overall safety level is decreased (10.6%) thus increasing the safety level is acceptable.