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Applied Sciences
Special Issues
Recent Research in Occupational Exposure Assessments and Hazard Control Measures
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Recent Research in Occupational Exposure Assessments and Hazard Control Measures

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomedical Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 April 2024) | Viewed by 6180

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Chun-Yip Hon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Occupational and Public Health, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada
Interests: exposure assessment; evaluation of interventions; risk assessment; hazardous drugs; food processing; quantitative analysis

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), every year, there are approximately 340 work-related accidents and 160 million cases of occupational illness. These are staggering numbers, and evidence-based best practices are necessary to reduce the global burden of occupational injuries and diseases.

This Special Issue aims to publish high-quality, original research papers dedicated to novel developments and/or improvements intended to address occupational hazards and, in turn, reduce the risk to the exposed working population. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Biomonitoring of occupational exposure
  • Air pollution and airborne hazardous pollutants in environment
  • Simulation and modeling tools for occupational exposure assessment
  • Technologies for hazards remediation

Topics of interest in this Special Issue include assessing occupational exposures as well as some of the methods designed to reduce the risk of workplace hazards. The latter may be directed towards long-standing workplace hazards or emerging hazards that could adversely impact worker health and well-being.

Dr. Chun-Yip Hon
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • occupational hygiene
  • interventions
  • risk assessment
  • safety controls
  • Internet of Things
  • biological monitoring
  • statistical modeling

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 2160 KiB  
Article
Harnessing Generative Pre-Trained Transformers for Construction Accident Prediction with Saliency Visualization
by Byunghee Yoo, Jinwoo Kim, Seongeun Park, Changbum R. Ahn and Taekeun Oh
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(2), 664; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14020664 - 12 Jan 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 970
Abstract
Leveraging natural language processing models using a large volume of text data in the construction safety domain offers a unique opportunity to improve understanding of safety accidents and the ability to learn from them. However, little effort has been made to date in [...] Read more.
Leveraging natural language processing models using a large volume of text data in the construction safety domain offers a unique opportunity to improve understanding of safety accidents and the ability to learn from them. However, little effort has been made to date in regard to utilizing large language models for the prediction of accident types that can help to prevent and manage potential accidents. This research aims to develop a model for predicting the six types of accidents (caught-in-between, cuts, falls, struck-by, trips, and others) by employing transfer learning with a fine-tuned generative pre-trained transformer (GPT). Additionally, to enhance the interpretability of the fine-tuned GPT model, a method for saliency visualization of input text was developed to identify words that significantly impact prediction results. The models were evaluated using a comprehensive dataset comprising 15,000 actual accident records. The results indicate that the suggested model for detecting the six accident types achieves 82% accuracy. Furthermore, it was observed that the proposed saliency visualization method can identify accident precursors from unstructured free-text data of construction accident reports. These results highlight the advancement of the generalization performance of large language processing-based accident prediction models, thereby proactively preventing construction accidents. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Research in Occupational Exposure Assessments and Hazard Control Measures)
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15 pages, 2197 KiB  
Article
Exposure to Noise and Vibration of Vocational Education Training Teachers
by Lourdes Santos-Romero, Maria Dolores Redel-Macias and Miguel Gonzalez-Redondo
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(17), 9693; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13179693 - 28 Aug 2023
Viewed by 800
Abstract
Teachers in workshops of vocational education training (VET) schools are at risk of exposure to occupational hazards, as are the rest of the teaching staff. However, due to the characteristics of these workshops, these teachers are exposed to a greater extent to other [...] Read more.
Teachers in workshops of vocational education training (VET) schools are at risk of exposure to occupational hazards, as are the rest of the teaching staff. However, due to the characteristics of these workshops, these teachers are exposed to a greater extent to other types of risks, such as noise or vibrations. Exposure to these risks for vocational training teachers has been little studied compared to other risks, such as voice disorders. In this study, exposure to noise and vibration was evaluated for teachers in a vocational training center in Cordoba (Spain), working in body shops. The values obtained from the measurements taken for different tasks and machine tools showed that the exposure limit values specified in the corresponding regulations were reached and even exceeded. This implies that these types of risks must be taken into consideration for these types of teachers, and that measures must be taken to mitigate their effects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Research in Occupational Exposure Assessments and Hazard Control Measures)
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18 pages, 10867 KiB  
Article
Novel Technological Advances to Protect People Who Exercise or Work in Thermally Stressful Conditions: A Transition to More Personalized Guidelines
by Leonidas G. Ioannou, Urša Ciuha, Jason T. Fisher, Lydia Tsoutsoubi, Kunihito Tobita, Ana Bonell, James D. Cotter, Glen P. Kenny, Andreas D. Flouris and Igor B. Mekjavic
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(15), 8561; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13158561 - 25 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1677
Abstract
Background: Prevention plays a key role in ensuring health and safety and is particularly important in scenarios when life is threatened. Adverse thermal conditions are experienced by billions of people daily, affecting the human capacity for thermoregulation and increasing the risks of life-threatening [...] Read more.
Background: Prevention plays a key role in ensuring health and safety and is particularly important in scenarios when life is threatened. Adverse thermal conditions are experienced by billions of people daily, affecting the human capacity for thermoregulation and increasing the risks of life-threatening accidents, diseases, and fatalities. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a new, freely accessible method that will ultimately allow health, as well as exercise and labour organizations, to predict and potentially mitigate the physiological strain experienced by people who exercise or work in thermally stressful environmental conditions. Methods: First, we used concurrent technological advances and thermophysiological modelling to (i) develop a mobile phone application that predicts the physiological heat strain experienced by individuals conducting physical activity in adverse environmental conditions, and (ii) provide them with individualized heat mitigation strategies. Second, to examine the construct validity of the newly developed mobile phone application, core body temperature was recorded using gastrointestinal thermometry in 37 healthy soldiers during different activities. These data were used to examine the predictive capacity of our application in pre-classifying individuals with an increased risk of experiencing elevated physiological heat strain during work based on the guidelines (core body temperature ≥ 38 °C) of the World Health Organization. Results: The core body temperature predictions made by the mobile phone application were positively related (r = 0.57, p < 0.05) with the actual physiological measurements taken by our participants (mean absolute error: 0.28 °C). More importantly, our application correctly predicted 93% of occurrences of elevated physiological heat strain and 90% of those that were not (overall accuracy: 92%). Conclusions: Mobile phone applications integrating thermophysiological models can predict the physiological heat strain experienced by an individual, but it remains to be studied whether the suggested heat mitigation strategies can reduce or prevent adverse impacts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Research in Occupational Exposure Assessments and Hazard Control Measures)
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19 pages, 657 KiB  
Article
Biological Monitoring via Urine Samples to Assess Healthcare Workers’ Exposure to Hazardous Drugs: A Scoping Review
by Chun-Yip Hon and Naqiyah Motiwala
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(21), 11170; https://doi.org/10.3390/app122111170 - 04 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1860
Abstract
Although biological monitoring is beneficial as it assesses all possible routes of exposure, urine sampling of healthcare workers exposed to hazardous drugs is currently not routine. Therefore, a scoping review was performed on this subject matter to understand what is known about exposure [...] Read more.
Although biological monitoring is beneficial as it assesses all possible routes of exposure, urine sampling of healthcare workers exposed to hazardous drugs is currently not routine. Therefore, a scoping review was performed on this subject matter to understand what is known about exposure and identify knowledge gaps. A literature search was performed on three databases: ProQuest, Web of Science, and PubMed. Articles published between 2005 and 2020 and written in English were included. Overall, this review consisted of 39 full-text articles. The studies varied with respect to design, sample sizes, sample collection times, and drugs examined. Many articles found at least one sample had detectable levels of a hazardous drug. Studies reported urinary drug contamination despite controls being employed. Knowledge gaps included a lack of an exposure limit, lack of a standardized sampling method, and lack of correlation between health effects and urinary contamination levels. Due to differences in sample collection and analysis, a comparison between studies was not possible. Nevertheless, it appears that biological monitoring via urine sampling is meaningful to aid in understanding healthcare workers’ exposure to hazardous drugs. This is supported by the fact that most studies reported positive urine samples and that case-control studies had statistically significant findings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Research in Occupational Exposure Assessments and Hazard Control Measures)
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