Abstract
In 2018, 1822 incidents relating to death or injury occurred among street cleaners in South Korea. However, South Korea currently lacks comprehensive studies on related injuries based on street cleaners’ job characteristics and environments in the country. This study analyzed injuries according to the job characteristics and environment through a survey of 150 Korean street cleaners working in the Seoul and Gyeonggi-do areas. This study assessed three category measures—demographic, job characteristics, and environments—to determine the effects of injuries. The demographic measures consisted of age, gender, and education level. Job characteristic variables consisted of length of time on the job, job contract, monthly income, working hours per day, working start time, overtime per month, and days off per month. For job environments, this survey included job duty, classification, main tasks, work intensity, and safety equipment. The data were analyzed according to descriptive statistics, injury ratio, and Probit regression analysis. The results of the analysis demonstrated that the participants with the highest risk of injury were mostly males with less than a middle school education. Assessment of the job characteristics showed that the most prevalent length of working experience was less than 5 years, with most engaging in contract/day work. A share of 36.67% of the participants reported injuries. The most prevalent reason for injury was overwork (32.73%), and the most frequent injury area was the lower back (49.09%). In summary, injuries among street cleaners were associated with education level, job experience, days off from work, and work intensity. As such, street cleaners should receive more education to decrease the risk of injuries, regardless of the number of employees or their contract status.
Highlights
In South Korea, 971 workers died in 2018 due to workplace incidents, and 2.7 workers die due to injuries in industrial settings, on average, each day [1]
We needed to realize which factors will affect the rate of injury among street cleaners and how injury in working environments can be prevented
This study provided an overview of the injuries based on job characteristics and environments among street cleaners in South Korea
Summary
In South Korea, 971 workers died in 2018 due to workplace incidents, and 2.7 workers die due to injuries in industrial settings, on average, each day [1]. Of occupations with high fatal work injury rates in 2018, street cleaners ranked fifth in the dangerous job ranking in the United States [2]. The work of street cleaners in South Korea includes a wide range of job duties in diverse work environments, such as collecting, loading into trucks, and incinerating garbage bags of refuse or recyclable materials [3,4,5,6]. In South Korea, the public sector usually hires street cleaners [7,8]. Who clean streets and collect garbage from the roads using dustpans, brooms, and plastic garbage bags [3]. Not all street cleaners enter contracts with the government (18,992 people); some contract with private cleaning businesses (24,398 people) [3,9].
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