International Journal of Occupational Hygiene
Volume:10 Issue: 3, Aug 2010

The quality of nursing work life is an important index for assessing the professional health of nurses and providing tailored care services to patients. The aim of the present study was to find out the role of work-family conflict and self-regulation in predicting the quality of work life among nurses. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, a total number of 230 nurses were randomly selected from public and private hospitals. They were asked to fill out Work-related Quality of Life Scale-2, Work–Family Conflict Scale, and Self-Regulation Questionnaire. Moreover, the structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data by SPSS-19 and LISREL-8.80 software. The results showed that the model had a good fit to the observed data (RMSEA=0.06, GFI=0.93, AGFI=0.87, NFI=93, CFI=95, IFI=95, and P-value=.073) and the final model was verified. Behavior-based and time-based work-family conflicts , assessing the plan’s effectiveness, searching for options, and implementing the plan could significantly predict stress at work, general well-being, working conditions, employees’ engagement, job career satisfaction, and work-home interference (p<0.05). In conclusion, it is indispensable to design the tailored programs and professional health plans to improve family-work interference and self-regulatory actions, as leading causes for the quality of nursing work life.

Fumed silica is used in insulation products because of its thixotropic properties and low thermal conductivity. Exposures to crystalline silica are of most concern, but there is evidence that exposures to nanometer sized fumed silica may also lead to adverse health outcomes. Direct reading real time instruments are used to assess concentrations of airborne particles, they often contain an aerosol pre-separator-cyclone, which may cause measurement variation by dispersing agglomerated particles. The cyclone effect was determined by evaluating three instruments measuring airborne fumed silica as a case study. This result indicated that the measured nanoparticle concentrations of fumed silica increased with cyclone use, thus correction should be made for measuring fumed silica using cyclone attached instrument.

Nurses have always been considered as a unique working group because of the physically and mentally demanding tasks they bear at work. Such a working condition exposes them to a high risk of fatigue, which could influence their work ability. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between work ability index (WAI) and fatigue of critical care nurses in a military hospital.

In this descriptive and cross-sectional study, 101 nurses (71 females, 30 males) of critical care units filled out both the Persian version of WAI and nurses fatigue questionnaires. The nurses were selected from three general hospitals of Tehran by cluster sampling method. The Pearson correlation test was used for investigating the relationship between two quantitative variables, and all the statistical analyses were performed by SPSS v. 21 software.

The nurses’ average age was 24.5 years old (±SD=±3.6), and the mean of work experience was 9 years (±SD=±4.13). The mean work ability of the nurses was 40.01 (±SD=±4.05), indicating “good work ability”. Fatigue was found in 46.19% of the participants, and the nurses’ fatigue was mainly of mental type (29.8%). There was a significant negative correlation (-0.57) between the score of WAI and total fatigue (p < 0.001).

The negative correlation between WAI and fatigue shows that WAI and fatigue score could be a good predictor of health and quality of work life. Therefore, identifying the influential factors of nurses’ work ability and fatigue would help to improve the work condition of critical care nurses.

Traffic violations and aggression are often regarded as social phenomena with important social and economic consequences. The present study investigated the potential contribution of demographic variables, driving anger and aggression on predicting aggressive driving behavior. The sample population consisted of 168 male drivers with an age range of 19–30 years old and the average driving experience of 9 years. All participants filled out the self-reported scales that assess driving anger, aggression dimension, and driving behaviors. Based on the participants' responses to the trait-anger dimensions in Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, they were re-categorized in three driving anger categories of high-trait-anger, medium-trait-anger, and low-trait-anger. All of the participants had a driving certificate. The main results of this research indicate that: (1) for almost all variables, the effect of anger was significant; (2) anger situation had a contribution in the prediction of lapse, errors, and violations; (3) demographic variables, driving anger, and aggression were all involved in predicting driving behavior in a complementary manner; and (4) aggression was the best predictor of violations. Future research is recommended to continue to investigate the effect of various environmental, social, psychological, and personality factors on risky driving behaviors in order to identify treatment and prevention strategies for this societal concern.

In process industries, storage tanks play an important role in the storage of a wide range of chemicals, compressed gas and other hydrocarbons. Gas release from these tanks can lead to catastrophic events with huge financial, human, and environmental consequences. In this study, a compressed gas tank was chosen as the unit of case study. Gas release as the top event was taken into consideration for quantitative and qualitative analysis of the probable consequences using the Event Tree Analysis and Bayesian network model. Analyzing the consequences of gas release from the tank by Event Tree Analysis (ETA), 6 safety barriers were detected to prevent the top event. The success and failure of these barriers could lead to 10 final consequences. Among the identified consequences, “near misses” were known to be the most probable consequence. The results of the study showed that safety barriers could significantly reduce the consequences of the occurrence of the top event. Bayesian networks can fix the static problem of quantitative risk analysis and provide the capability to determine the most probable consequences of the top event.

Reported exposures to hazardous fumes and gases from the welding process indicate the importance of using effective ventilation systems to control these emissions. This study was designated to control the welding contaminants and to utilize the performance of a prototype on-gun system in bench scale. The study evaluated ventilation parameters including exhaust flow rate, capture velocity, and lastly, duct and face velocities for the system of interest. Hood operation was tested at 34.06 standard cubic feet per minute (SCFM). ISO 10882-1 (part 1) method, the gravimetric method, was used to determine the total particle concentration and hood efficiency. The study found that, in general, when the hood face was located at 2 cm from the gas nozzle, capture velocity in arc point reached 140 fpm. By increasing the distance to 4-6 cm, the capture velocity decreased to 100 and 60 fpm, respectively. We concluded that the distance of the hood face from nozzle had a direct effect on capture efficiency. The evaluated hood could reduce exposure risk of welding fumes with a capture efficiency of 77.73% in the hood distance of 2 cm from the nozzle.

Work-related accidents and illnesses are a great concern in developed countries. Numerous researches have been performed to find an appropriate approach to decrease occupational accidents. This descriptive-analytical study was designed based on the retrospective and field studies to develop a customized model of the safety culture and identify the effective factors of safety culture in a car manufacturing company. In order to present a new customized model of safety culture questionnaire, the study was designed in three phases: 1) Proposing a customized model, 2) Constructing a validated questionnaire, and 3) Conducting a field study. A total number of 619 cases completed the questionnaire (321 injured and 298 uninjured people). Cronbach's alpha of the questionnaire was 0.855. The injured population noticeably acquired more points than the uninjured workers in all items of the questionnaire except for "safety rules and regulations"; though, this difference was statistically significant (P<0.05) only in the 7 items. The correlation between almost all of the safety culture components in the injured and uninjured workers was positive (P<0.05 P <0.001). Developing a customized model and questionnaire for a car manufacturing industry is an important finding of the present study. The results showed that the safety culture of the injured subjects was higher than those uninjured. Therefore, it can be stated that the occupational accident is the milestone for the evaluation of the safety culture.

Steam boiler is a common primary utility that creates steam by applying heat energy to water in a close system and poses different threats. The present study aimed to identify health, safety, and environmental hazards by implementing Hazard Identification (HAZID) method and Analytical Network Process (ANP). Therefore, the identified hazards were categorized and scored by HAZID method and then, prioritized using ANP. A total number of 58 hazards were identified in 4 categories; of which, 6 hazards were weighted by the super decisions software. According to the results, job stress and cooling system wastewater were recognized as the most and the least important hazards, respectively.