To assess the mental disturbances induced by accidents at work, 41 male workers who had witnessed a fatal work accident were evaluated utilizing the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders. The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) was also administered to the exposed workers, as well as to 47 non-exposed construction-worker controls. The two groups were well matched with respect to age, years of employment, and years of education. They were all of Han sect; and lifestyles, incomes, and living conditions were similar. The exposed workers had a high rate of PTSD: 11 of 41 (26.8%) at one month and five of 39 (12.9%) four months after the fatal accident. The exposed groups' scores for depressive symptoms were significantly higher than those of the controls, including: 1) depressed mood, 2) guilt, 3) initial insomnia, 4) middle insomnia, 5) delayed insomnia, 6) decreased interest in work and other activities, 7) anxiety, 8) somatization, and 9) gastrointestinal symptoms (p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001). Fatal work accidents, a major hazard in the construction industry, affect not only the victims but also the mental health of other workers. PTSD and associated emotional disorders related to exposure to serious work accidents deserve more attention for clinical and research purposes.
BackgroundTo quantify the contribution of locally implemented prevention programmes in contributing to reductions in treatment and care costs by averting HIV infections among those who inject drugs this study calculates net financial benefit of providing harm reduction programmes using information from services being implemented in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China ( between 2005 and 2010).MethodsInformation was collected to assess cost of providing methadone treatment (MMT) and needle and syringe programmes (NSP). HIV incidence was estimated among people who inject drugs (PWID). HIV infections averted were calculated. Net benefit was assessed by estimating costs of providing prevention programmes and comparing these to the costs of providing care.ResultsAn estimated 5678 (range 3982–7599) HIV infections were averted between 2005 and 2010 and the net financial benefit of providing harm reduction programmes compared to treatment and care costs for HIV infections averted was USD 4.383 million during the same time period.ConclusionThese results demonstrate the net and accumulating benefit of investing in harm reduction programmes for PWID in Urumqi. The return on investment progressively increased during the time period studied and it is clear that these cost savings will continue to accrue with the continued implementation of HIV prevention interventions in the community that include harm reduction programmes targeted at PWID.
With the participation of social capital, the operation and maintenance performance of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) urban infrastructure is becoming the key value-added point. This chapter summarizes and analyzes the problems of traditional urban infrastructure operation and maintenance (UIOM), and innovatively proposes the UIOM mode under the PPP background. Combined with the characteristics of the new generation of information technology, this chapter puts forward an efficient and intelligent UIOM mode with the features of intelligent decision-making, fine maintenance, technical optimization, capital saving, resource integration, and sustainability. This chapter takes the Highway Tunnel as the example, propose the Evaluation Index System for Intelligent UIOM Mode and implement the evaluation process using the AHP. The proposed intelligent UIOM Mode provides a scientific solution to the improvement of the subsequent evaluation system and the optimization of operation and maintenance decisions in PPP urban infrastructure projects.
Safety statistics from Indiana Department of Labor showed that the transportation and warehousing industry has the second highest number of reported occupational fatalities (26) in 2020. One major cause of occupational fatalities is ergonomic issues including excessive force, repetitive motion, and awkward posture. These ergonomic issues have already been extensively studied and corresponding solutions were developed for the building construction activities. However, transportation activities are different from building construction activities in duration, intensity, and frequency. In addition, there lacks studies exploring whether the proposed solutions to ergonomic issues of building construction could also solve the ergonomic issues of transportation activities. To this end, field experiments were conducted with 29 transportation maintenance workers between August 9th 2023 and September 23rd 2023 at a transportation maintenance unit of Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). Lifting bags of dry concrete mix was identified as the activity of top concern, according to (1) the perception of which activity most likely to cause an injury to back or shoulder, (2) the frequency of performing the activity, and (3) the number of historical sprain injuries caused by the activity. Therefore, the participants were asked to lift 12 bags of three different weight of dry concrete mix with and without a back exoskeleton. Specifically, three different weights of bags include: 80-pound bags (weight of bags that INDOT maintenance workers mostly use), 50-pound bags (weight of bags that INDOT maintenance workers sometimes use and which is recommended by Recommended Weight Limit equation under the ideal condition), and 31.5-pound bags (recommended weight of bags based on applying values from real lifting practice of INDOT maintenance workers into the Recommended Weight Limit equation). The participants need to lift bags from a pallet to a truck with liftgate, have a five-minute short break, offload those bags from the truck with liftgate to the ground, and then have a 20-minute long break. Skin conductance and heart rate, as the key indicators of physical fatigue, were measured during the lifting activity. In addition, perceived level of muscle exertion was also collected by using a Borg 6-20 scale during two experiment breaks of each trial for indicating level of fatigue risk level from low to very high. After performing a paired t-test of collected data, it shows that the back exoskeleton does not significantly help workers reduce physical fatigue risks while transportation maintenance workers lift 31.5-pound bags. However, the back exoskeleton can significantly lower the physical fatigue risks when transportation maintenance workers lift 50-pound bags and 80-pound bags. This study not only fills the gap of exploring the effectiveness of back exoskeleton implementation in transportation maintenance activities, but also provides evidence and practical recommendations for transportation workers, managers, and organizations that a back exoskeleton could reduce the level of fatigue risk when lifting materials with weight of 50 pounds and above.
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