Hasil untuk "Industrial medicine. Industrial hygiene"

Xiaoliang Wu, Shengli Zhang, Lihong Ma et al.

Background: Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), which is widely used in clinical practice, is aimed at improving nerve function impairment after brain injury. Meanwhile, the effects of music therapy on brain function are unclear. This retrospective study was conducted to explore the application effect of HBOT combined with music therapy on patients suffering from aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Methods: For this retrospective study, 130 patients with aSAH after HBOT were selected from our hospital from June 2021 to June 2022. The patients were divided into the observation (n = 70) and control (n = 60) groups based on whether they received music therapy. Comparisons were made on general demographic data, blood flow rate in median cerebral artery (MCA), cerebral vasospasm (CVS), National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), activities of daily living (ADL) score, Self-Rating Depressive Scale (SDS), and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) of patients. Results: Baseline data between the two groups showed no statistically significant difference (P > 0.05). After management, patients in the observation group presented significantly lower SAS and SDS scores (P < 0.05), lower blood flow rate in MCA, CVS and NIHSS scores (P < 0.05), and higher ADL scores than the control group (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The combination of HBOT and music therapy can considerably improve cerebral neurological deficits, slow down cerebral arterial blood flow, promote the recovery of postoperative cerebral function in aSAH patients, and improve anxiety and depression and the patients’ ADL.

James S. Brown, Gary L. Diamond

Abstract Inhalation is a portal-of-entry for aerosols via the respiratory tract where particulate burden accumulates depending on sites of particle deposition, normal clearance mechanisms, and particle solubility. The time available for dissolution of particles is determined by the balance between the rate of particle clearance from a region and their solubility in respiratory solvents. Dissolution is a function of particle surface area divided by particle volume or mass (i.e., dissolution is inversely proportional to the physical diameter of particles). As a conservative approach, investigators commonly assume the complete and instantaneous dissolution of metals from particles depositing in the alveolar region of the respiratory tract. We derived first-order dissolution rate constants to facilitate biokinetic modeling of particle clearance, dissolution, and absorption into the blood. We then modeled pulmonary burden and total dissolution of particles over time as a function of particle size, density, and solubility. We show that assuming poorly soluble particle forms will enter the blood as quickly as highly soluble forms causes an overestimation of concentrations of the compound of interest in blood and other extrapulmonary tissues while also underestimating its pulmonary burden. We conclude that, in addition to modeling dose rates for particle deposition into the lung, physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling of pulmonary and extrapulmonary tissues concentrations of moderately and poorly soluble materials can be improved by including estimates of lung burden and particle dissolution over time.

Margarita Zamora Saa, Jilberto Zamora-Saa

Este artículo examina el actual método para evaluar la exposición a contaminantes químicos en altitud usando los Threshold Limit Value (TLV). Estos valores son establecidos para trabajos a nivel del mar en jornadas de 8 horas diarias y 40 horas semanales. Se analiza este problema aplicándolo a un grupo específico de mineros chilenos que trabaja sobre los 3000 m con jornadas excepcionales de 12 horas diarias. Se comparan dos alternativas para evaluar la exposición a contaminantes químicos: ajustes al TLV en altitud, y el cálculo de la dosis inhalada. Puesto que la ventilación por minuto es el parámetro fisiológico que cambia en altitud se propone y fundamenta como método de evaluación el cálculo de la dosis inhalada del contaminante químico.

Iraj Mohammad Fam, Ali Akbar Fazaeli, Mohammad Reza Sarv Ahmadi far

Background and Objective: Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development in which they deserve health and safety. The rapid growth of industrialization coupled with insufficient attention to safety principles has led to an increase in the rate of occupational accidents in developing countries. This study aimed to estimate the years of life lost due to work-related accidents among workers covered by the National Organization of Social Security from 2007 to 2017. Materials and Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted based on the statistics of occupational accidents reported by the National Organization of Social Security using the Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) index. Disability percentiles were used to estimate the disability burden in this study. Moreover, Excel software was utilized to estimate the number of years lost due to early death and disability, and the overall years of life lost regarding the social values. Results: The results showed that 181900 years were lost due to occupational accidents. Moreover, 15.8% and 84.2% of the lost years were due to early death and disability, respectively. It should be noted that the majority of the work-related lost years (i.e., 39860 years, 21.9%) were related to construction activities. Conclusion: The results of this study highlighted the poor supervision on construction activities and the need for training the construction workers and contractors.

Cristina Pavan, Massimo Delle Piane, Maria Gullo et al.

Abstract Background Silica continues to represent an intriguing topic of fundamental and applied research across various scientific fields, from geology to physics, chemistry, cell biology, and particle toxicology. The pathogenic activity of silica is variable, depending on the physico-chemical features of the particles. In the last 50 years, crystallinity and capacity to generate free radicals have been recognized as relevant features for silica toxicity. The ‘surface’ also plays an important role in silica toxicity, but this term has often been used in a very general way, without defining which properties of the surface are actually driving toxicity. How the chemical features (e.g., silanols and siloxanes) and configuration of the silica surface can trigger toxic responses remains incompletely understood. Main body Recent developments in surface chemistry, cell biology and toxicology provide new avenues to improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the adverse responses to silica particles. New physico-chemical methods can finely characterize and quantify silanols at the surface of silica particles. Advanced computational modelling and atomic force microscopy offer unique opportunities to explore the intimate interactions between silica surface and membrane models or cells. In recent years, interdisciplinary research, using these tools, has built increasing evidence that surface silanols are critical determinants of the interaction between silica particles and biomolecules, membranes, cell systems, or animal models. It also has become clear that silanol configuration, and eventually biological responses, can be affected by impurities within the crystal structure, or coatings covering the particle surface. The discovery of new molecular targets of crystalline as well as amorphous silica particles in the immune system and in epithelial lung cells represents new possible toxicity pathways. Cellular recognition systems that detect specific features of the surface of silica particles have been identified. Conclusions Interdisciplinary research bridging surface chemistry to toxicology is progressively solving the puzzling issue of the variable toxicity of silica. Further interdisciplinary research is ongoing to elucidate the intimate mechanisms of silica pathogenicity, to possibly mitigate or reduce surface reactivity.

Benjamin Kayatz, J. Hillier, Francesca Harris et al.

Bo-Young Jang, Dong-Mug Kang, Young-Ki Kim et al.

Abstract Background This study aimed to identify the difference of perception about the role of appointing health officers by comparing and analyzing the response of entrustment workplace (EW) and specialized health management institution (SI). This is considered an important aspect of an institutional assessment to improve the quality of health management services. Methods A survey questionnaire was mailed to 122 SIs and 319 EWs nationwide. The questionnaire survey was about the general characteristics of SIs and EWs and main occupations for each evaluation item. In total, 81 SIs (66.4%) and 30 EWs responded to the questionnaire. A logistic regression analysis was performed to compare the opinions of SI and EW. Results Based on the analysis, the items showing statistically significant differences were as follows. Doctors’ main tasks survey: “Guidance on their wearing personal protective equipment (PPE)” (OR: 4.58), “Guidance of improvement of work environment (WE)” (OR: 3.33), etc.; Nurses’ main tasks survey: “Guidance on their wearing PPE” (OR: 3.86), “Guidance for programs on health process in confined space (CS)” (OR: 0.36), “Guidance on the hearing conservation program (HCP)” (OR: 0.28), etc.; Industrial hygienist (IH)‘s main tasks survey: “Guidance of work through inspection (WTI)” (OR: 0.15), “Guidance on the improvement of WE” (OR: 0.32), “Management confirmation of substances used by process and Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)” (OR: 0.08), “Guidance on posting or keeping of MSDS and warning signs” (OR: 0.03), “Prevention of dust-induced medical problems” (OR: 0.28), “Guidance for programs of health process in CS” (OR: 0.39), etc. Conclusions It is necessary to educate the EWs to recognize the need for physicians to perform tasks, such as wearing a PPE, and instruction to improve WE. As for nurses’ tasks, such as education about the CS and the noise work, educating the nurses of the SI is regarded necessary as the demand of the EWs is considered. With respect to the unique tasks of IH, such as WE management and instructions for wearing PPE, among several other tasks of IH, training should be provided for improved IH recognition.

Fereydoon Laal, Saber Moradi Hanifi, Yousef Mohammadian et al.

Background: In order to protect human resources, health and safety management systems such as OHSAS 18001, which is based on prevention, are necessary in projects. Therefore, the present study analyzes the incidents and evaluates the monitoring safety performance indicators based on work experience before and after the implementation of OHSAS 1800. Methods: This descriptive analytical study was performed on all incident victims during 2004 to 2011 at Yazd Combined Cycle Power Plant by census method. Data were extracted from the incident report checklists as well as technical protection committee documents of the plant. The AFR, ASR, FSI, FR, and IR indices were calculated based on OSHA standard before and after the implementation of OHSAS 18001. Descriptive statistics, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Chi-square were used for data analysis. Meanwhile, the significance level was considered equal to 0.05.Results: 287 work-related incidents occurred during an 8-year period (2004-2011(. The 44.9% of incidences (n=129) were reported in the age group under 30 years and&nbsp; the lowest incidence rate was observed in the age group over 50. 97% of the incidents were reported in men while 2.8% of the incidents were reported in women. According to the results, there was a significant relationship between age and work experience as well as age and marital status. There was also a significant decrease in the indices in the years after the implementation of OHSAS 18001. Conclusion: The results showed that the implementation of safety systems and deployment of OHSAS 18001 has reduced the incident indices based on work experience. Therefore, health and safety management systems are suitable tools for reducing incident rates and incident indices are also appropriate for monitoring the safety performance.

Sung Kyun Park, Zhangchen Zhao, Bhramar Mukherjee

Abstract Background There is growing concern of health effects of exposure to pollutant mixtures. We initially proposed an Environmental Risk Score (ERS) as a summary measure to examine the risk of exposure to multi-pollutants in epidemiologic research considering only pollutant main effects. We expand the ERS by consideration of pollutant-pollutant interactions using modern machine learning methods. We illustrate the multi-pollutant approaches to predicting a marker of oxidative stress (gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT)), a common disease pathway linking environmental exposure and numerous health endpoints. Methods We examined 20 metal biomarkers measured in urine or whole blood from 6 cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 2003–2004 to 2013–2014, n = 9664). We randomly split the data evenly into training and testing sets and constructed ERS’s of metal mixtures for GGT using adaptive elastic-net with main effects and pairwise interactions (AENET-I), Bayesian additive regression tree (BART), Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR), and Super Learner in the training set and evaluated their performances in the testing set. We also evaluated the associations between GGT-ERS and cardiovascular endpoints. Results ERS based on AENET-I performed better than other approaches in terms of prediction errors in the testing set. Important metals identified in relation to GGT include cadmium (urine), dimethylarsonic acid, monomethylarsonic acid, cobalt, and barium. All ERS’s showed significant associations with systolic and diastolic blood pressure and hypertension. For hypertension, one SD increase in each ERS from AENET-I, BART and SuperLearner were associated with odds ratios of 1.26 (95% CI, 1.15, 1.38), 1.17 (1.09, 1.25), and 1.30 (1.20, 1.40), respectively. ERS’s showed non-significant positive associations with mortality outcomes. Conclusions ERS is a useful tool for characterizing cumulative risk from pollutant mixtures, with accounting for statistical challenges such as high degrees of correlations and pollutant-pollutant interactions. ERS constructed for an intermediate marker like GGT is predictive of related disease endpoints.

L.J.H. Lee, S. Chang, C. Li et al.

L. Lee, Jing-Shiang Hwang, Yu-Yin Chang et al.

R. Curini, S. Sernia, G. Ferro et al.

Jungho Lee, S. Kam, Keon-Yeop Kim et al.

The Effect of Phosphorus-related Nursing Intervention on Physiologic Indicators of Hemodialysis Patients Jung-Hwa Lee, Sin Kam, Keon Yeop Kim, Myung Unn Song, Eun-Ju Lee, Won Kee Lee Graduate school of Public Health, Kyungpook National University, Daegu; School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu; Laboratory of Industrial Health, Daegu Haany University, Daegu; Department of Dental Hygiene, Busan Institute of Science and Technology, Busan, Korea

C. Petyx, G. Costa, M. Manno et al.

Nicola Magnavita

The work of the police force has certain peculiarities that require models of risk management that aim not only at the prevention of risks to which each operator is daily exposed but also at promoting healthy habits that can counteract the risk of chronic and degenerative diseases that affect their working capacity. The Italian Society of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene has taken on the task of translating this approach into guidelines for medical surveillance of workers.

Sánchez Pinilla, M. Ricardo

V. Zakharenkov, I. V. Viblaya

V. Zakharenkov

C. Y. Chang, K. Yang, Y. Kuo et al.

José Miguel Aravena Castro

Dementia is a syndrome that affects predominantly the individual’s cognitive condition. Related to an aging population dementia has increased in terms of prevalence and incidence, with the consequent impact on health costs and above all, a high impact on the lives of people with dementia, their caregivers and their families. Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia in the population aged 60 years and over. Currently the treatment of dementia of the Alzheimer’s type aims to slow or minimize the impact on functional, social and cognitive areas. However there is growing research that focusesin primary prevention that seeks to establish causality from protective or risk factors related for example, to lifestyles, identifying prevention agents for dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. This work seeks to make an analysis considering data from the evidence on the prevention of dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, as well as to reflect on the role that the occupation of the subject as a protective factor from a preventive intervention.