ARTICLE INFO

Article Type

Original Research

Authors

Mohammadfam   I. ()






() Department of Professional Health, Faculty of Health, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan, Iran

Correspondence

Address:
Phone:
Fax:
mohammadfam@umsha.ac.ir

Article History

Received:   October  10, 2009
Accepted:   February 26, 2010
ePublished:  

ABSTRACT

Aims The increasing fashion of development and the use of modern and sophisticated technology, despite several benefits, causes numerous problems in the field of health and safety; from which, the most important one is the increase in the rate of accidents and occupational diseases. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the unsafe behaviors among a defense industry staffs in Iran and assess the role of warning signs in reduction of mentioned behaviors.
Methods This intervention study was carried out in one of the defense industries in Iran. At the first stage, using safety behavior sampling technique, behavior of 623 staffs working at studied unit was evaluated. At the second stage, after analysis of collected data, the frequency of each unsafe behavior and their proportion in the whole unsafe behaviors was obtained and then their probable relationships with some demographic features were investigated. Safety behaviors were calculated before and after (2 & 4 months) installation of standard safety signs (ANSI).
Results Before intervention, 52.1% of behaviors were unsafe. The most frequent ones were the abuse or lack of the use of personal protective equipments, inappropriate postures and incorrect use of manual tools. However, after 2 and 4 months from intervention, unsafe behaviors rate reduced to 33.2 and 38.7%, respectively.
Conclusion The use of safety signs has significant impact on reducing unsafe behaviors in staffs; however, its effectiveness is reduced over the time.


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