Industrial health
-
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is one of the most common inhalation anesthetics in current anesthesiological practice. Even though artificial ventilation and active scavenging in operating theaters are employed in most of the modern hospitals, potential N2O contamination persists in regular anesthesia, particularly pediatric operation. In order to understand personal exposure during pediatric anesthesia, ambient monitoring for N2O exposure around the breathing zone of the anesthesiologist was conducted by a portable infra-red Miran 1B2 spectrophotometer. ⋯ Modification with intravenous induction followed with cuffed endotracheal intubation or mask general anesthesia provided with a ventilation hood diminished the contamination apparently, with the resulting mean TWAs of 11.0 +/- 4.7 ppm and 17.9 +/- 9.8 ppm in 7 and 5 cases respectively. The results indicated that excessive N2O exposure to anesthesiologists was not negligible during routine pediatric anesthesia. Significant reduction could be achieved via appropriate industrial modification.
-
In order to evaluate the relationship between job stress and mental health, a cross-sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire relating to demographics, subjective job stress and mental health state. The questionnaire consisted of a 30-item Japanese version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) developed by Goldberg in addition to questions about subjective job stress, to measure mental health and job stress conditions, respectively. All subjects were employees of an electronic company in Japan. ⋯ We employed a multiple logistic regression analysis to estimate the relationship between subjective job stress and mental health, adjusting for gender, age, marital state, familial stress, and physical health state. Subjective job stress was significantly associated with the state of mental health. In particular, the items of "too much trouble at work," "too much responsibility," "are not allowed to make mistakes," "poor relationship with superiors," and "cannot keep up with technology" were significantly related to mental health.
-
Analysis of the accident records of an aluminium smelting industry, covering about 2,100 employees, over a period of three years, showed a total of 465 accidents of male employees. Out of these, 5 were fatal, 40.86% were from contacts with extreme temperatures, causing burn injury to 42.58%. Hot materials were the agents causing 44.52% of the burn injuries. ⋯ Average number of days lost per accidents was 71.95 days and average duration of man-hours between accidents was 32,516. Mean age of the employees, who met with the accidents were 29.53 years. Share of accidents in the second half of each shift was always more than that in the first half, and this average was 66.66%.