BackgroundIn Ghana, fire incidents have become a regular occurrence, with thousands of lives and millions of dollars lost every year. Hardly a day passes without news of a fire outbreak in some part of Ghana, causing fear and panic among the people. This generates much discussion centering on rumors relating to politics, sabotage, misfortune, religious differences, etc. This article seeks to discuss the trend of fire incidents occurring in Ghana from 2000 to 2013 and the different ways to prevent these incidents.MethodsThe pattern of fire incidence in Ghana as a whole as well as in each region is discussed. The study took into consideration the causes, mechanisms, as well as preventive measures against the fire menace. Data were obtained from the head office of Ghana's national fire service.ResultsIt was noticed that in general the rate of fire incidence increased each year. This increase was attributed to several factors: rate of population growth and industrialization, unstable electricity, urbanization, negligence, illegal electrical connection, etc. The cause of fire was categorized into domestic, industrial, vehicular, institutional, electrical, commercial, bush, and others. Among these causes, domestic fire accounted for 41% of the total number of fire incidents in the country.ConclusionFinally, this study presents several recommendations to help prevent and mitigate fire incidents in Ghana.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a broad field of professional practice, which involves specialists from different disciplines including but not limited to engineers, occupational health physicians, physical and biological scientists, economists, and statisticians. The preventive systems required to ensure workers are protected from injuries and illnesses dwell heavily on engineers; however, the extent to which the engineer can go regarding planning and implementing preventive measures is dependent on specific legal requirements, leadership commitment from the company, organization, and nation. The objective of this paper is to identify the areas of opportunities for improvements in OHS management in Ghana with regard to the nation's legal requirements, commitment of the Ghana government, and Ghanaian leadership as well as appropriate structuring of Ghanaian institutions responsible for monitoring and managing OHS in Ghana. This paper identified Ghana's fragmented legal requirements concerning OHS, which are under different jurisdictions with unclear responsibilities and accountabilities. The paper also highlights the training needs of Ghanaian academic institutions regarding OHS. Among other recommendations made including structuring of Ghanaian institutions to manage OHS in line with the ILO-OSH 2001, this paper aligns the recommendations with the articles and elements of International Labour Organization convention number 155 and OHSAS 18001 elements.
It can be expected that a chiral solvent possesses a certain potential to discriminate between two enantiomers by creating specific weak interactions and forming diastereomeric complexes which have different physical properties. Thus, for chiral solvents, there might be an asymmetry in the solubility phase diagrams that could be employed for resolution purposes. In this work, investigations were carried out to identify appropriate chiral solvents for the discrimination of enantiomers with the aid of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The 1H NMR and Raman spectra results of mandelic acid in the chiral solvents did not show any significant chiral recognition. The effect of (S)-ethyl lactate and (2R, 3R)-diethyl tartrate on solubility was examined by measuring the ternary phase diagrams of mandelic acid and N-methylephedrine. The phase diagrams determined at different temperatures were symmetric indicating again that the used chiral solvents have less or no influence on the thermodynamics of solution. However, in additional experiments, it was found that there can be significant differences in the nucleation behavior of the two enantiomers in a chiral solvent. Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society [accessed October 8, 2008
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