Job Hazards Research Articles

How to develop an effective training program

This article will address some of the basic concepts for developing a training program that would be needed for qualifying electrical maintenance employees. The typical method utilized for developing such an effective training program is the systematic approach to training (SAT) and instructional systems design (ISD) methodology. The analysis phase of the ISD will be the primary focus of this article and will address several key elements which include the requirements for a qualified person, as well as conducting a needs assessment, job/task analysis (JTA), and job hazards analysis to develop and maintain an effective and safe work force.

Relationship between depression symptoms and stress in occupational populations

To explore the relationship between the depression symptoms and occupational stress in occupational populations. Depression symptoms were measured by using the center for epidemiological survey-depression scale. The occupational stress instrument were employed to investigate the stressors, personalities, social support, and coping strategies as well as the subject's age, length of service, sex, educational level and marriage status. Chi(2) test was used for analyzing the difference of depression. The multiple covariance analysis was used for testing the difference of stressors, personalities, social support, and coping strategies among the groups with different scores of depression. The variables obtained in the optional prediction equation were identified by multiple stepwise regression analysis. The incidence rate of definite depression symptoms was 40.2%. The total average score was 21.74 +/- 8.99. Henan province had the highest incidence rate of depression symptoms, 43.8%, Hebei 39.4%, and Beijing the lowest, 23.4%. The male workers had the higher incidence rate of depression symptoms, 43. 0% than female, 35.4% (P < 0.01). The older group had the lower incidence rates of depression symptoms, compared with the younger group (P < 0.01). The workers divorced or with the bereft spouse had the higher incidence rate of depression symptoms than the workers married and unmarried (P < 0.05). The workers with middle school education had the higher incidence rates of depression symptoms than those with master degree. Incidence rates in the most occupational groups were more than 30%. The significant difference was shown between the different jobs (P < 0.01). The difference of the adjusted means among three groups of different depression score were analyzed. The results showed the workers with definite depression symptoms had the higher scores than the other two groups in physical factors, role ambiguity, role conflict, job monotony, mental load, responsibility for persons, job future ambiguity, job hazards, type A behavior and work locus of control, and social support (P < 0.05, P < 0.01). The former had the lower scores than the other two groups in the scores of promotion, participation, autonomy, task identity, feedback, friendship opportunity, speed control, training adequacy, challenge, self-esteem, organizational commitment, and coping strategies. Fifteen variables entered the predictive equation of depression score explaining 33.1% of variance. There are serious mental health problems in the occupational population in our country. Stressors and personalities affect the mental health.

Workplace Hazards, Unions, and Coping Styles

Coping styles influence levels of stress. This study examines how workers cope with hazards at work and whether unions help work ers cope more effectively with those hazards. We surveyed 237 workers at a chemical plant in Louisiana and found that perceived exposure to fire and explosions at work increased workers' levels of anxiety. Problem-focused strategies to cope with those potential risks reduced anxiety and depression. Aside from supervisory or managerial authority, which is not available to most workers, we found that only one factor effectively moves workers who are in subordinate positions to actively cope with hazards: membership in an independent labor union. These findings suggest that union growth could indirectly reduce job stress by giving workers the voice to cope effectively with job hazards.

Adult health

The objective of this study is to analyse the social inequalities in health status, health related behaviours and mortality among the 25-64 years Spanish population. Data come from the 1997 Spanish National Health Survey, the 1999 Spanish National Survey on Working Conditions, the 2001 Yearbook of Labour and Social Affairs Statistics and the 1998 Mortality Statistics. Most health-related behaviours are more unfavourable for men (smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight) and for less privileged social classes. Among women, entrance into the labour market is associated with more unhealthy behaviours except for overweight. Low weight, however, is more frequent among employed females. Self-perceived health status is better among men, more privileged social class persons and among workers. Whereas classical physical job hazards and work injuries mostly affect men, the impact of psychosocial job hazards and of exposures derived from the domestic work is higher for women. As in other developed countries, the paradox exists that whereas women have a poorer self-perceived health status, mortality is higher among men. The male excess in mortality is related to health-related behaviours that to a great extent are determined by traditional values assigned to masculinity, with higher consumption of tobacco (lung cancer), alcohol (cirrhosis), drugs (HIV and AIDS) and risky behaviours related to injuries. Health policies should take into account social inequalities in health determined by gender, social class and employment status. For doing so, it is important to increase the development of research on social inequalities and of health information systems sensitive to social inequalities.

Determinants of work injuries in mines – an application of structural equation modelling

In spite of stringent regulations and much attention towards reducing risks in the physical environment, the mining industry continues to be associated with high levels of accidents, injuries and illnesses. Only engineering solutions to accident prevention are inappropriate unless coupled with focused attention to the attitudes and behaviours of the mineworkers in coping with the inherent physical, technical and situational risks. The present study identified these various risk factors and analysed their influences on work injury in a causal framework. Data were collected from an underground coalmine of India. The pattern and strength of relationships of 16 causal factors with work injuries were assessed through structural equation modelling. The case study results showed that negatively personified individuals are of major concern for safety improvement in the mine studied. They not only fail to avoid work injuries, they are unable to extend safe work behaviours in their work. The variable safety environment is negatively affected by personality, whereas social support has a positive relationship with safety environment. The variable job hazards appeared to have a significant relationship with job involvement, which has a negative relationship with work injury. Elimination of negative behaviours must be focused and committed by the mine safety management. Long term planning through (i) identification of negative individuals, (ii) proper councelling of adverse effects of negative behaviours, and (iii) special training with psychological treatment is highly required. Identification may begin while recruiting new workers through interview. Proper allocation of jobs (right person for right job) may be a judicial solution to this end.

Falls in workers during pregnancy: risk factors, job hazards, and high risk occupations.

Although falls are a major source of trauma during pregnancy and 70% of pregnant women are employed, information on falls among pregnant workers is lacking. Study objectives were to estimate fall prevalence and risk factors among pregnant workers. This retrospective cohort study used birth certificates to identify recently pregnant women. Data were collected via phone, internet, and mail surveys. The primary outcome investigated was a fall at work during pregnancy. Adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Of the 2,847 employed women, 26.6% (757) fell during their pregnancy and 6.3% (179) fell at work. Walking on slippery floors, hurrying, or carrying an object occurred in 66.3% of work falls. The service and teaching industry should be evaluated for risk reduction. Future research should determine if counseling during pregnancy will reduce falls in the workplace.

Role of work permits in teen workers' experiences.

Work permits are required for working teenagers under 18 in 41 US states, but little is known about the work experience of those with work permits compared with those without such permits. This study examines job hazards, training, and knowledge of child labor laws reported by students in a predominantly Latino high school in Los Angeles and compares the responses of those who obtained work permits with those who did not. Student responses to a 60 item questionnaire were supplemented with information from focus groups and a survey of work permits issued by the school. Students without work permits were more likely to perform hazardous tasks and to use certain types of dangerous equipment and less likely to receive health and safety training than those with permits. Possible explanations for the findings and suggested areas in need of policy change or research are considered.

Ergonomics, loss management, and occupational injury and illness surveillance. Part 2: injury and illness incident profile. Sample data.

This paper supports the information found in the first part of this two-part article. The Occupational Injury And Illness surveillance data contained herein were extracted from an integrated loss control reporting system. This paper describes the incidents reported over a 10-yr period at a mid-sized industrial organization in terms of the occupational injury or illness (incident character, body part injured, nature of injury) and the cause of the incident (basic cause, substandard actions and conditions, contributing factors and remedial work to control efforts). These data are presented for the express purpose of justifying the usefulness of loss management data for the targeting and evaluation of ergonomic programs and initiatives. The 10-yr data capture revealed that during this time frame over 14,000 incidents were recorded. The most common types of incidents involved being struck by objects and overexertions while the most commonly injured body parts were the fingers, back, head and eyes. The most common nature of injury were sprains, bruises and cuts. Low work standards and inadequate job/task/tool design were frequently noted as the basic cause while the most common substandard actions contributing to the incident were workers being inattentive to ambient job hazards and utilizing unsafe work positions. Trying to avoid extra effort was consistently cited as a major contributing factor. Design improvements were cited as remedial action in up to 13% of incidents. Relevance to industry In order to be of utility to an organization, ergonomic programs and initiatives must have a sound method of targeting the most appropriate area for intervention as well as an accurate and timely method of evaluation. The loss control reporting system employed by advocates loss management is just such a tool. The elements of the loss control reporting system pertinent to ergonomic programs as well as examples of the data they provide are presented in the second part of this two-part article.

The Use of Ergonomic Concerns Data as a Proactive Input to the Design of Workplace Tools

The Ford Motor Company has recorded over 5606 ergonomic concerns relating to job hazards through their automated evidence book ErgoRx. As part of a review of the ergonomics process in Ford, a study was carried out to look at the transfer of ergonomic information between division process engineers and plant ergonomics personnel. The study focused on ergonomics training and background knowledge, and Ford tools used to provide ergonomics information and the feedback processes. Issues on the effective feedback of ergonomics data early on in the design process are of particular interest in the light of the recent repeal of the OSHA Ergonomics regulation. Instead of using reportable ergonomics concerns to trigger remedial actions, concerns can be reduced by designing-out the features that cause the problems. Used in this way concerns data, as well as existing ergonomics tools, can be used as a cost effective, proactive input in new and redesign activities. This approach, used more widely, could be an effective way of removing objections to the imposition of a difficult to apply, and largely reactive ergonomics regulation.

Job Characteristics Influence Return to Work after Ischemic Stroke

P129 Background. Prior work has shown that few factors other than stroke severity predict return to work after ischemic stroke. Although job characteristics have been studied as determinants of return to work after myocardial infarction, there are few data on the relationship between these characteristics and return to work after stroke. Methods. A prospective study of return to work was conducted in patients with first ischemic stroke, ages 24–64, employed full-time outside of the home immediately prior to the stroke, and discharged to home or acute rehabilitation. At 6 weeks after stroke, the patients completed standardized questionnaires describing job characteristics, including the Job Content Questionnaire. At 6 and 12 months after stroke, time to return to work was determined by telephone interview. Statistical methods were univariate lifetables and a multivariate forward stepwise Cox regression model with Barthel Index, age, and the job characteristics as independent variables. Results. Of 150 stroke patients, 64% were male and 48% were African-American, with a mean age of 51. Patients employed at 12 months had significantly less demanding jobs (both physically and psychologically) and less job insecurity (all p &lt; 0.05) and more decision authority, more job-related social support, more job satisfaction, and fewer job hazards (nonsignificant trends). The independent predictors from the Cox model, in order of entry, were psychological job demands, Barthel Index, job physical exertion, and job insecurity. Conclusion. Job characteristics were strong predictors of return to work after ischemic stroke in patients with mild to moderately severe stroke. Implications. Interventions in the work environment may have potential to promote reemployment after stroke.

Job Hazards for Musculoskeletal Disorders for Youth Working on Farms

A series of eight focus groups were convened to: (1) identify tasks and activities performed by youth on farms with the potential for causing non-traumatic work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs); (2) determine the participants perceptions about risks of MSDs for youths performing those tasks; and (3) determine other factors that might relate to MSDs for youth working on farms, such as possible interventions for prevention. Seventy-two farm family members, 40 adults and 32 farm youth aged 8-18, participated in focus groups. Ten questions were posed to each of the eight groups about what tasks youth perform on the farm, how the work is assigned, and what risk factors are associated with the work. There was general agreement among the adults that maturity rather than age is the dominant factor for determining what tasks are performed by youth workers on the farm. Youth, on the other hand, believed that task urgency dictated what jobs were assigned to youth workers. Most adults indicated that lifting objects, forking, or shoveling was responsible for most of the serious non-traumatic injuries. Bending over while working, sitting in an awkward position looking back at equipment from a tractor, sitting in a cramped position, looking down at a combine header, and long hours of work were also identified as potential problems. Youth described muscle aches and strains of the legs, arms, shoulder, back or neck as everyday occurrences. According to the youth, "If it's not broken, you're fine". Only basic training is provided and most respondents believed that youth learned best through observation. There was general agreement that physician recommended guidelines for assigning youth to tasks would be ignored unless they carried the force of the law.

Behavioral Commitment Among the Automobile Workers in South Korea

The research reported in this article evaluates the extent to which the theoretical constructs established as determinants of behavioral commitment in the U.S. have cross-cultural validity in South Korea. A causal model developed and validated in the U.S. is estimated among automobile workers in Korea and the results indicate 18 prominent determinants: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job search, met expectations, legitimacy, transfer costs, positive and negative affectivity, opportunity, role conflict and ambiguity, spouse and supervisor support, routinization, autonomy, job hazards, involvement, and distributive justice. These are fundamental explanatory constructs that have long been affirmed in the U.S., and, as such, this study suggests evidence to support their cross-cultural validity. In spite of several Korean cultural characteristics that are relevant to employee behavioral commitment, the theoretical constructs explaining behavioral commitment are generally the same between the U.S. and Korea. The findings are interpreted with discussions of the implications.

The impact of workers' compensation on wage premiums for job hazards

The existence of a trade-off between occupational risk and earnings is well known. Most studies, however, ignore how public insurance systems, like workers' compensation (WC) affect this trade-off. This paper incorporates the workers' compensation system into a hedonic earnings function for paid employees. The results show that workers' compensation lowers the wage-risk trade-off for a sample of Ontario workers. In the absence of workers' compensation, employees would receive a significantly higher risk premium for exposure to the possibility of occupational injuries. This implies that labour markets will provide more than the socially optimal degree of risk if experience rating of workers' compensation is incomplete.

Workers' right-to-know legislation: does it work?

Workers' right-to-know (WRTK) laws and regulations were established to empower workers to protect their health by providing them with information about the hazards to which they are exposed while at work. The present study was conducted to examine the implementation of WRTK regulations in Israel. We interviewed 552 workers and 33 safety officers from a random sample employed at 50 industrial plants. The workers' questionnaire included items on awareness and self-management of workplace hazards, and the safety officers answered questions about job experience and hazards communications to workers. In 36% of cases workers and their safety officers disagreed about the existence of hazards in the workplace (p < 0.001). Most (78%) of the workers' knowledge about work hazards was based on informal sources, i.e., not those stipulated by the regulations. There were also discrepancies between worker and safety officer reports regarding the provision of safety training upon employment (p < 0.001), recent instructions about special risks and distribution of relevant printed material. We found that more than 5% of workers were unable to read the language in which the hazards material was written and 22% had levels of education below that required to comprehend the technical terms used. There are serious problems in the implementation of WRTK regulations in Israel. We recommend that employers be made aware of the importance of these laws and of their proactive duty to comply with them and that the material distributed to workers be written in simpler terms and/or explained orally in a language they understand. These findings have important implications for all countries with similar legislation and should form the basis for further and more comprehensive studies world-wide.

Predicting accidents at work with measures of locus of control and job hazards.

This study was conducted to assess the predictive ability of measures of locus of control and job hazards in involvement in accidents in the workplace. The locus of control scale consisted of 24 items while the job hazards were a measure of the probability of no involvement in an accident. A logistic regression model was 89% accurate in classifying subjects by involvement in an accident as measured by workers' compensation claims.

Alcohol abuse and job hazards

Do hazardous working conditions encourage heavy drinking and/or does heavy drinking contribute to job-related injuries and deaths? Simultaneous equations probit and least squares models are constructed to answer these questions. Samples of employed persons are drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey II (NHANES II; n = 8,477), and the Quality of Employment Survey (QES; n = 1,393). Heavy total alcohol use is alternatively defined as drinking any alcoholic beverage at least once a day, or frequently drinking three or more drinks at a time. In the QES, heavy use is also defined as drinking on-the-job. Heavy beer, wine, or liquor use is separately defined in the NHANES II as drinking four or more times per week. The endogenous variables reflecting job hazards include subjects' evaluations of the hazardous nature of the job and fatality rates within occupations and industries. Exogenous variables include age, gender, race, marital status, wages or family income, rural residence, Southern residence, years of schooling, union membership, percent of industry unionized, minimum legal drinking age for beer, religion variables, smoking status, and beer tax. Only one robust alcohol finding emerged: Heavy beer use was found to be strongly correlated with the fatality rates within occupations and industries. In a related finding, a disproportionately high number of smokers were found employed in dangerous jobs. Separate analyses of beer, wine, and liquor (spirits) appeared essential to explaining correlations between dangerous jobs and heavy alcohol use. Evidence for a simultaneous relationship between beer abuse and job-related deaths suggests that prior estimates of the effect of alcohol abuse on job-related accidental deaths have been exaggerated.

DANGEROUS JOBS AND HEAVY ALCOHOL USE IN TWO NATIONAL PROBABILITY SAMPLES

Samples of employed persons within the US were drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey II (n = 8477), and the Quality of Employment Survey (n = 1393) to test the hypothesis that a positive association existed between alcohol use and job hazards. Heavy total alcohol use, or beer or wine or liquor use separately, were the dependent variables. The key independent variables included subjects' evaluations of hazardous nature of the job and fatality rates within occupations and industries. Models were estimated with logistic regressions controlling for age, gender, race and other covariates. Only one robust finding emerged: heavy beer use was found to be positively and strongly correlated with the fatality rate within occupations. Additional correlations between job hazards and heavy alcohol use were weak, generated large P values, and some suggested an inverse association. The lack of robust findings for the additional correlations may partially be explained by the associations between job categories on the one hand and choice of beverage on the other. Blue-collar jobs are more hazardous than white-collar jobs, on average. Persons in blue-collar jobs were more likely to drink beer, while those in white-collar jobs were more likely to drink wine or liquor (spirits). Separate analyses of beer, wine and liquor appeared essential to explaining correlations between dangerous jobs and heavy alcohol use in these data. Limitations of the study included (1) age of the data (from the 1970s). (2) alcohol use and some job hazards were measured by self-report, and (3) data were from only one country.

Misperceived job hazards and welfare

Bayesian workers produce ‘chemicals’ hazardously in one sector of a two-sector economy having one safe sector. Adopting an expected ex post welfare perspective, we show workers' misperceptions of hazards entail a classic externality. We characterise chemicals' competitive, monopoly and socially efficient outputs, assuming workers receive identical wage-accident compensation contracts under each, the value of information which induces workers to place greater stress on firms' safety records or sharpens their priors, and extend the standard monopoly welfare loss index for sufficient conditions for monopoly to be preferred to competition in chemicals and for size-ranking monopoly and efficient chemical outputs.

Book Review : Teaching About Job Hazards: A Guide for Workers and Their Health Providers, N. Wallerstein and H. Rubinstein, American Public Health Association, Washington, D.C., 1993, 170 pp

Book Review : Teaching About Job Hazards: A Guide for Workers and Their Health Providers, N. Wallerstein and H. Rubinstein, American Public Health Association, Washington, D.C., 1993, 170 pp

A Causal Model of Behavioral Commitment: Evidence From a Study of Australian Blue-collar Employees

This study examines the behavioral commitment ( intent to stay) of a sample of blue-collar employees from a manufacturing firm in Australia. The purpose was to test an integrated causal model of behavioral commitment based on four general classes of variables: structural, pre-entry, environmental, and employee orientations. The LISREL results indicate that variables rank ordered in terms of importance for their total causal effects on the decision process of employees to stay or leave an organization is as follows: job search, job satisfaction, job security, attitudinal commitment, union participation, environmental opportunity, physical conditions, job hazards, met expectations, equity, family responsibility, centraliza tion, supervisory support, and work group cohesion.