Bad Safety Research Articles

Functionalized polypropylene separator coated with polyether/polyester blend for high-performance lithium metal batteries

Commercial polyolefin separators used in lithium metal batteries (LMBs) have the disadvantages of insufficient thermal stability and poor wettability with electrolytes, which causes bad safety and battery performance. Poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL)-based electrolytes have drawn widespread attention in the field of polymer electrolytes owing to their electrochemical stability and high lithium-ion transference number. This work proposes a strategy of functionalizing commercial polypropylene (PP) separator coated by blending PCL (M w ~ 50,000) and poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO, M V ~ 600,000). Compared to commercial PP separators, PP-blended PEO60w/PCL5w separators possess better wettability with electrolytes and electrochemical performances. The initial discharge specific capacity of LiFePO4-based LMBs assembled with PP-blended PEO60w/PCL5w separators reaches 144 mAh g-1 (1C) and 103 mAh g-1 (5C) at room temperature, respectively. Notably, Li/PP-blended PEO60w/PCL5w/LiFePO4 shows an improved capacity retention rate of 77% after 800 cycles, confirming that the functionalized separator with coated PEO/PCL blend has great potential for application in the field of LMBs.

Assessment of Levels of Occupational Stress among the Intensive Care Workers in a Selected Hospital in Lagos State

Background: Working in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) comes with a great deal of physical, emotional, and psychological strain that can get worse with time if not properly managed. Numerous factors contribute to the extreme levels of stress experienced by healthcare professionals, such as long and demanding work hours, the burden of paperwork and legal matters, the disruption of work-life balance, the complexity of shared decision-making, and the high expectations placed ICU workers by on both patients and carers. Some outcomes of occupational stress among intensive care workers include bad safety culture, poor standard of care for patients and depression. Research Objective: The Purpose of the study was to ascertain the levels of occupational stress among the intensive care workers of a hospital. Methodology: The research was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH). An aggregate of 108 intensive care workers were sampled for the study. A pre-tested, semi-structured self-administered questionnaire was used to gather the data, and the statistical package for social sciences, SPSS version, was used for analysis. The means and standard deviations, or the median and interquartile range, were used to express continuous variables. The expressions for categorical variables were frequencies accompanied by percentages. The study employed chi square statistics to evaluate the correlation between categorical variables. Results: There is an average prevalence of stress among intensive care workers of LASUTH. Recommendation: Staff sshould undergo training on stress handling, in order to be able to manage their individual stressors and reduce the overall stress.

Risk Analysis of Laboratory Fire Accidents in Chinese Universities by Combining Association Rule Learning and Fuzzy Bayesian Networks

Targeting the challenges in the risk analysis of laboratory fire accidents, particularly considering fire accidents in Chinese universities, an integrated approach is proposed with the combination of association rule learning, a Bayesian network (BN), and fuzzy set theory in this study. The proposed approach has the main advantages of deriving conditional probabilities of BN nodes based on historical accident data and association rules (ARs) and making good use of expert elicitation by using an augmented fuzzy set method. In the proposed approach, prior probabilities of the cause nodes are determined based on expert elicitation with the help of an augmented fuzzy set method. The augmented fuzzy set method enables the effective aggregation of expert opinions and helps to reduce subjective bias in expert elicitations. Additionally, an AR algorithm is applied to determine the probabilistic dependency between the BN nodes based on the historical accident data of Chinese universities and further derive conditional probability tables. Finally, the developed fuzzy Bayesian network (FBN) model was employed to identify critical causal factors with respect to laboratory fire accidents in Chinese universities. The obtained results show that H4 (bad safety awareness), O1 (improper storage of hazardous chemicals), E1 (environment with hazardous materials), and M4 (inadequate safety checks) are the four most critical factors inducing laboratory fire accidents.

Analysis of the impact of safety hazards in construction project management and defensive measures

A construction project has the characteristics of a long-period and complex process. Moreover, the construction industry is also a high-risk industry, and there are all kinds of safety hazards in the construction process of construction projects. Therefore, safety management is the top priority. The good or bad safety management in the construction process is related to the construction progress and construction quality of construction projects and closely related to the personal safety of construction personnel. If the construction enterprise cannot provide a reliable guarantee of the quality and safety of the construction project, it will cause a severe impact on the construction enterprise. Therefore, in the construction process of construction projects, it is necessary to uphold the construction safety management principle of "safety first," which emphasizes construction safety and lays the foundation for higher construction quality in construction projects under the premise of ensuring safety.

Photo-responsive polymeric nanocarriers for target-specific and controlled drug delivery.

Conventional drug delivery systems often have several pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic limitations related to their low efficacy and bad safety. It is because these traditional systems cannot always be selectively addressed to their therapeutic target sites. Currently, target-specific and controlled drug delivery is one of the foremost challenges in the biomedical field. In this context, stimuli-responsive polymeric nanomaterials have been recognized as a topic of intense research. They have gained immense attention in therapeutics - particularly in the drug delivery area - due to the ease of tailorable behavior in response to the surroundings. Light irradiation is of particular interest among externally triggered stimuli because it may be specifically localized in a contact-free manner. Light-human body interactions may sometimes be harmful due to photothermal and photomechanical reactions that lead to cell death by photo-toxicity and/or photosensitization. However, these limitations may also be overcome by the use of photo-responsive polymeric nanostructures. This review summarizes recent developments in photo-responsive polymeric nanocarriers used in the field of drug delivery systems, including nanoparticles, nanogels, micelles, nanofibers, dendrimers, and polymersomes, as well as their classification and mechanisms of drug release.

CORRELATION OF SAFETY PERCEPTIONS AND SAFETY BEHAVIOR IN UNIVERSITY TEACHING LABORATORY

Chemicals usage has been reported as the cause of accidents in a laboratory. Those accidents have caused many injuries, even fatality in many sectors, one of which happened in the University Teaching Laboratory. Accidents usually happen because of unsafe behavior, while unsafe behavior is caused by bad safety perceptions. This paper investigates the correlation of perceptions and behavior in University Teaching Laboratory. The result measured by regression analysis to find out the relationship between two variables showed that there is a strong relationship between perceptions and behavior. Therefore, safe behavior can be created through creating good perception.

Application of an Improved Model for Accident Analysis: A Case Study.

An improved accident causation model which demonstrates the relationships among different causal factors was proposed in this study. It provides a pathway for accident analysis from the individual level to the organizational level. Unsafe acts and conditions determined by individuals’ poor safety knowledge, low safety awareness, bad safety habits, etc. are the immediate causes of an accident. Deficiencies in safety management systems and safety culture remain the root causes, which can cause consequences at the individual level. Moreover, the weaknesses of an organization’s safety culture can have a great impact on the formation of a good safety climate and can further lead to poor decision-making and implementation of procedures in the safety management system. In order to contribute to a better perception and understanding of the accident causation model, one typical case in the process industry, the oil leak and explosion of the Sinopec Donghuang pipelines, was selected for this study. The causality from immediate causes to root causes is demonstrated in sequence and can be shown in this model explicitly and logically. Several important lessons are summarized from the results and targeted measures can be taken to avoid similar mistakes in the future. This model provides a clear and resourceful method for the safety and risk practitioner’s toolkit in accident investigation and analysis, and the organization can use it as a tool to conduct staff trainings and thus to keep accidents under control.

Time to take corporate innovation initiatives

PurposeA bad safety accident at a manufacturing company usually results in casualties and economic losses. The company affected by such an accident must deal with pressure from multiple stakeholder groups. Employees, in particular, play a key role in pushing the affected company to develop strategies to improve occupational safety and health. The purpose of this paper is to seek answers to two questions: does a safety accident affect employee behavior in terms of giving up prospects to develop a career at the affected company? If yes, could innovation initiatives adopted by the company help moderate the negative consequences from a safety accident?Design/methodology/approachBy investigating 120 safety accidents reported by publicly listed Chinese manufacturing companies between 2009 and 2016, the authors conduct an empirical study using regression-based statistical hypotheses testing to describe the companies’ responses and prospects for their employees.FindingsThe results show that the magnitude of the accident and the accident being caused by an employee error positively affect the turnover of employees. Furthermore, technical innovation initiatives, such as spending on R&D, by the accident-affected companies increase the positive effect of the accident magnitude on employee turnover. On the contrary, management innovation initiatives, such as corporate social responsibility activities, weaken the impact of the accident magnitude and employee error on employee turnover.Originality/valueThis study contributes to knowledge development by adding a crisis perspective in human resource management research. It helps to better understand the impact of safety accidents on employee behavior and the response taken by companies through innovation initiatives.

Les traitements pharmacologiques des douleurs neuropathiques

Neuropathic pain is defined as pain caused by a lesion or a disease affecting the somatosensory nervous system. Development of neuropathic pain is induced by many pathophysiological mechanisms affecting pain pathways. Neuropathic pain has diverse origins, making its management difficult, hence, many patients with neuropathic pain do not receive appropriate treatment. In 2015, a revision of the Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group's (NeuPSIG) previous recommendations, based on a systematic review and meta-analysis, evaluated the efficacy of systemic and topical treatments of neuropathic pain. Treatments lines were established using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE), which allows to rate the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations. First line treatments are gabapentin and pregabalin, noradrenalin and serotonin reuptake inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants. Capsaicin and lidocaine patches are second line treatments, tramadol and strong opioids are third line treatments. This work also highlighted molecules with inconclusive recommendations or non-recommended pharmacological treatments based on a low quality of evidence, a lack of efficacy or a bad safety profile. The objective of this paper is to present the different treatments and to detail their mechanisms of action.

How does the flow of construction workers affect safety culture?

Active and mature safety culture can effectively reduce the occurrence of safety accidents. However, in international projects, construction workers from different countries gather in one project, which will inevitably lead to the integration of safety culture. A bad safety culture can have a negative impact on the overall safety culture. This paper constructed a construction safety culture fusion model, and then used computer simulation technology to simulate the model. By adjusting the parameter values, the influence of the flow of construction workers on the safety culture was analyzed. It was found that the mobility of construction workers will not change the critical value of a cultural outbreak, but it will change the accumulation period before the outbreak; strengthening the cultivation of safety culture identification of construction workers can effectively prevent the impact of the poor safety culture; the new influx of safety culture first affects leaders in the project.

Analysis of an explosion accident at Dangyang Power Plant in Hubei, China: Causes and lessons learned

On August 11, 2016, an explosion of a high-pressure steam pipeline occurred at a power plant in Dangyang City, Hubei Province, China. The accident killed 22 people and 4 people were injured. The causal factors of the accident were analyzed to prevent such catastrophe in the future. The entire accident process was divided into three sequential events for respective analysis based on timeline. Furthermore, a new model demonstrating the relationships among different causal factors was proposed and applied for this accident analysis. With respect to the power plant, the deficiencies from five causal categories were identified, which clearly demonstrated the accident mechanism from immediate causes to root causes. The results of the analysis indicated that unsafe acts performed by staff from different levels in power plant led to unsafe conditions, which were due to three factors, i.e., staff’s inadequate safety knowledge, weak safety awareness and bad safety habits. The elements in safety management system (e.g., “procurement,” “determination of applicable legal requirements and other requirements”) were not implemented and maintained. Moreover, the staff did not reach a consensus on specific safety beliefs (e.g., “safety is the first priority,” “the importance of top management commitment”), which indicated poor safety culture in the organization. Finally, in order to prevent the recurrences of similar accidents, the major lessons learned from this explosion were proposed and the application of the analysis results for related safety training was discussed.

Pharmacological treatment of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer's disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundA wide variety of pharmacological agents are used in the management of neuropsychiatric symptoms, which are common in Alzheimer's disease (AD), but results from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) on the...

Five Bad Environmental and Safety Decisions Leading to Catastrophic Results

A power plant hired a painting contractor with a poor safety record history. Five painters perished in a fire when the contractor failed to adhere to OSHA's safety standards. The power plant faced criminal charges. Although later acquitted, the company had to pay millions in restitution and endure a public trial. A refinery with a major air permit operated without an environmental staff and endangered its neighbors and workers. Executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Another oil refinery failed to implement its own internal EHS audit findings months before a catastrophic explosion that killed fifteen employees and injured hundreds.

Is Vietnam Ready for Nuclear Power?

V demand on power supply is increasing rapidly along with economic growth. It is a matter of urgency for Vietnam to find alternative energy source other than fossil fuel in order to minimize the influence on local climate. Currently the world’s largest nuclear power market exists in emerging economies and developing countries as those countries are in great need of relatively cheap energy to drive its economic growth. But nuclear power, neither cheap nor safe, is putting those countries in a dilemma. As the hot spot of the nuclear power market shifted from “advanced technology” to “economic affordability”, how to find a comprehensive nuclear power solution for developing countries with specific requirements poses a serious question to the international community. Demand on power supply grows by 14% per year and the growth is expected to reach 15% in Vietnam until 2015. Vietnam relies on hydro power, which accounts for 36.04% of national power supply in 2009. Short of other energy resources, it will be very difficult for Vietnam to meet the country’s power demand in the future only with hydro power and power converted from fossil fuels (such as oil, coal and natural gas). Nuclear power supply, an efficient option that addresses power shortage without emitting greenhouse gases, is still a powerful attraction to developing countries represented by Vietnam. Vietnam announced its ambitious nuclear power program that is scheduled to grow from one reactor in 2020 to 10 reactors by 2030 in which nuclear contribution to the national grid will be 1.5% in 2020, 8% in 2030, and 20−25% by 2050. Vietnam’s first nuclear power plant, located at Phuoc Dinh, is supplied by Atom Story Export from Russia. Its second, at Vinh Hai, is supplied by JAPC from Japan. As a developing country, the only thing Vietnam could do is to make nuclear power an integral part of the national grid and at the same time ensure its safety and security. Russia and Japan promised to provide aid package to Vietnam in order to meet Vietnam’s requirements on funds, technology, nuclear fuel, power plant construction and operation, etc., as Vietnam does not have the basic elements to develop nuclear power on its own. Developing countries as Vietnam must put nuclear safety and security on the first place and conduct researches on nuclear accidents in history, for example, Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc., the influence of natural disasters on nuclear power plants prior to developing nuclear energy. To keep a nuclear power plant running smoothly and safely, it is also necessary to build a team of nuclear experts, engineers, professionals, and operators. It takes years or decades for a country to master the essence of nuclear science and technology, depending on a country’s existing infrastructure. Since nuclear professionals are scarce in developing countries, Vietnam should add more nuclear engineering courses in colleges and universities to enlarge the scope of basic nuclear education and professional training. Government should invest more funds to support domestic training institutions and conduct cooperation programs with foreign counterparts to develop its indigenous nuclear professionals. The location of nuclear power plant is very important. According to local meteorological experts, the nuclear power plant in Ninh Thuan province is under the threat of tsunami. To minimize the influence of tsunami, the government should build a tsunami and earthquake warning center and establish a tsunami forecast system. Even if the nuclear power program is kicked off with sufficient funds and technologies, any delay in the phase of engineering construction will bring about disastrous and unimaginable consequences to a developing country like Vietnam. In the case of France’s EPR project, EDF announced a revised cost estimate of EUR 6 billion caused by delay, set against cost estimate of EUR 5 billion in 2010. A lesson learned from the Fukushima experience shows the way the Government and Nuclear Safety Agency supervise and regulate the management and operation of a nuclear power plant is of great importance to its safety and security. We think that it is difficult to establish a perfect nuclear management system with high safety standards in such a short period of time. A former director of the Dalat Nuclear Research Institute emphasized a bad safety culture is prevailing in every field of the country, as is shown by frequent traffic accidents in

Robust control filter for manufacturing systems : application to PLC training

AbstractIn this paper, we show how research dealing with the design of a robust filter for manufacturing controllers can be used in the field of PLC training. Maintenance tasks and improvements in the manufacturing process involve changes in the PLC (programmable logic controller) program that can have bad safety consequences. Hence, a PLC program which is at the startup of the production lifecycle safety validated can become unsafe. Today, this problem has increased because remote maintenance monitoring is a reality in manufacturing systems. We have proposed to design a robust filter placed inside the PLC which authorizes or forbids outputs from the PLC. The filter is composed of several logical constraints which have to be respected at each PLC cycle. In order to guarantee the filter quality, it is necessary to check that all constraints have been well defined. For that, in order to validate the filter, an original formal method has been proposed. This one is based on a modular modelling approach of the manufacturing system and by considering the most permissive PLC program. UPPAAL checker is used to verify that the filter is sufficient to avoid the manufacturing system to reach dangerous forbidden states. If it is the case, the filter guarantees the safety whatever the PLC program. Hence, the filter still remains active even if there are changes in the PLC program during the lifecycle of the production system. This approach is applied to safe PLC training in order to test on line the students’ PLC program. The explanatory capacities of the filter are used to supply explanations. The paper is illustrated with an application based on a virtual “sorting system”.

The risk of antiarrhythmic drugs in atrial fibrillation: 20 years of controversies

For about 20 years, the safety of antiarrhythmic drugs used in the maintenance of sinus rhythm in atrial fibrillation patients remains questionable. Immediately after the publication of the CAST trial in 1989, Coplen, in a meta-analysis published in 1990, showed that quinidine treatment was more effective than no antiarrhythmic therapy in suppressing recurrences of atrial fibrillation but appeared to be associated with increased total mortality. 1 In the past 20 years, this major safety problem has been evoked for all other antiarrhythmic drugs, even if it was already clear at that time that the safety profile of quinidine itself could be unfavourable, when compared with other antiarrhythmic drugs, mainly due to the risk of QT prolongation and torsade de pointes induced by the drug. In a large, unselected population-based cohort of patients discharged with first time atrial fibrillation and subsequently treated with flecainide, propafenone, sotalol or amiodarone, Andersen et al. found no increased risk of death. 2 The results are based on the data obtained in 141 500 patients included in this nationwide registry conducted in Denmark. In this unselected population of patients discharged after a first hospitalization for atrial fibrillation, the main findings were that antiarrhythmic drug therapy was not associated with increased risk of death. Furthermore, deaths occurring in the treatment groups were fewer than observed in the population not receiving antiarrhythmic drugs. The authors concluded that this indicates adequate patient selection by the treating physicians from a safety perspective. This major concern shows that cardiologists, after 20 years, are very careful about the use of these drugs in these patients. So, the main questions that can be asked are the following: is the bad safety profile of these drugs a myth or a reality? Do we have to consider that these good results are due to safe drugs or to safe prescriptions or both? After the publication of AFFIRM trial results 3 showing no difference, in terms of survival, between the strategies of rhythm and rate control, several publications dealt with the problem of proarrhythmic events, survival, and mortality. 4–6 The overall risk of adverse arrhythmic events upon exposure to antiarrhythmic drugs in the AFFIRM study was reasonably low. 4 The authors concluded that strict criteria for the safe use of antiarrhythmic drugs were successful in minimizing proarrhythmic events. In another paper, which was an analysis of causespecific mortality in the AFFIRM study, Steinberg 5 concluded that management of atrial fibrillation with the rhythm-control strategy conferred no advantage over rate control strategy in cardiac or vascular mortality and may be associated with an increased noncardiovascular death rate. The results obtained by Andersen and the Danish group, in real life, clearly demonstrate that it is not the case. Annualized mortality rates were 2.54, 4.25, 4.29 and 7.42 per year per 100 person-years for flecainide, propafenone, sotalol, and amiodarone, respectively. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard models did not show increased risk of death associated with any of the antiarrhythmic drugs. Sinus rhythm is either an important determinant of survival or a marker for other factors associated with survival that were not recorded, determined, or included in the survival model of AFFIRM. In the paper dealing with relationship between sinus rhythm, treatment, and survival in the AFFIRM study, 6 the authors concluded that currently available antiarrhythmic drugs were not associated with improved survival, which could suggest that any beneficial antiarrhythmic effects of antiarrythmic drugs are offset by their adverse effects. From these data it is possible that if an effective method for maintaining sinus rhythm with fewer adverse effects would be available, it might be beneficial. Of course, the hope of all arrhythmologists is that ablation procedures could be this beneficial method with few adverse effects. It is necessary, to date, to have data concerning mortality of these patients by comparing antiarrhythmic drug therapy and ablative procedures as first line therapies. The safety of antiarrhythmic drugs in this indication is now very well established, mainly because of the 20 year experience of the cardiologists, but also by the pharmacovigilance processes.

Road safety: international comparisons

Abstract It is difficult to compare the safety records of different countries because of differences in reporting accidents, population sizes and numbers of vehicles. Smeed's formula for predicting the expected number of road deaths in a country from the size of the population and the number of motor vehicles is critically evaluated. The difference between the number of deaths expected from the formula and the actual number of deaths in different countries (which does not seem to depend on the degree of motorization) is recommended for international comparisons. Some effects of legislation, propaganda, education and enforcement in various countries are reviewed. The road safety measures used in selected countries, with especially good or bad safety records, are compared. Countries with fewer road deaths than expected have lower speed limits and stricter laws to prevent driving after drinking than countries where there are more road deaths than expected. It is suggested that, if a country decides that the ...

Human Error Considerations in Determining the Optimum Test Interval for Periodically Inspected Standby Systems

This paper incorporates the effects of two types of human error in a model for determining the optimal time between inspections for a safety system. The possibility that a bad safety system is undetected upon inspection (Type B human error), as well as the possibility that a good safety system is inadvertently left in a bad state after the inspection (Type A human error), are considered. We develop a Markov model for the steady-state availability of the safety system which is then used to determine the optimum time between inspections which either maximizes the availability or minimizes the combined inspection and unavailability costs. The safety system failure (hazard) rate need not be constant. The optimum time between inspections increases as the probability of a Type A error increases and a Type B error decreases. The optimum availability decreases and the optimum total cost increases as the error probabilities increase.