This study develops a Road Safety Index (RSI) for commercial bus with the aim of determining whether the
proposed index can be beneficial to the stakeholders for the purpose of mitigating road accident and promoting road
safety. Five risk factors which include drivers, Vehicle, Task, Hazard/Risk and Road, where three critical factors out of
these factors, were identified as high contributing factors (Drivers, Vehicle and Road) were selected for the construction
of RSI. Drivers risk perceptions data were collected using survey instrument with sample size (n= 465) to test the
model and the data fits the model perfectly. The main benefits of this approach and the subsequent development of
RSI are: (1) Enable organisations to justify the investment on road safety by providing a measurement and evaluation
mechanism. (2) The index provides a balanced view of the impact of the three critical (DVR) risk factors that the
management can improve upon.
The frequency of occupational accident in small medium industries decreased from 2008 in general, but fluctuated each year,
which shows that improvement is needed in handling safety and health of the employees. It is believed that safety climate perception
and occupational safety health management system (OSHMS) influence occupational accident in an organization. A safety audit
checklist and self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the involved small medium industries. The findings show that safety
climate perception was high in small medium industries while OSHMS show low compliance. Findings also showed that there were
significant relationships between safety climate perception and OSHMS with occupational accident in the organizations (p
The aim of this paper is to identify, review and carry out comparison to seven guidelines where the main focus is on its risk
assessment elements related to confined space activities. This is due to lack of the specific approach of the Legislation for confined
space such as entry procedure requirements, risk assessment method, existing practice of risk assessment is too general and additional
references are required for conducting risk assessment which would lead to poor response from industries. The selected guidelines will
be summarized on its requirements, followed by a review of each guideline and finally the comparison of Legislations will be carried
out. The results from the study would be used as a contribution factor to promote an ideal method in developing an effective risk
assessment tools for working safely in confined space. Furthermore, several literatures which have been referred could give additional
input for developing the risk assessment tools.
This study illustrates about the most hazardous and risky activities associated with well drilling operation at on and offshore
oil and gas drilling sites by adopting exploratory research design (quantitative leading to qualitative). In this study researcher has
targeted three oil and gas industries each from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for the identification of associated hazards
and nature of hazardous activities faced by drilling crew during well drilling operation. Eighty (80) drilling crew members have
been randomly selected for answering the survey questionnaire. Likewise, nine (09) drilling health and safety officials have been
conveniently selected based on their safety expertise in oil and gas drilling field for semi structured in-depth interview. For analyzing
quantitative findings descriptive statistical methods has been used. While for qualitative section thematic analysis approach has
been utilized. Based on the findings, respondents from Malaysian oil and gas industries reported starting drilling activity as highly
hazardous at onshore well drilling, while handling drilling pipe has been considered more hazardous activity at offshore domain.
Similarly, in the context of Saudi Arabia, respondents highlighted that the handling drilling pipes are cause of major injuries at onshore
well drilling site. Whereas drilling fluid preparation and coring process is considered harmful at offshore sites. In contrast, participant
from Pakistan indicated coring process as a highly hazardous activity at on and offshore well drilling operation. According to overall
results based on the participant response, oil and gas well drilling operation at onshore domain is considered more hazardous
at Pakistani oil and gas industry as compare to other targeted industries with mean range 3.42. While for offshore well drilling,
Malaysian industry is recorded highly hazardous as compare to others leading with mean value 3.39 and related with chemical and
safety hazards in well drilling activities.
Licensed person is a third party who was awarded a license to perform statutory inspection for certificated
machinery under the provision of section 40 (1A), Factories and Machinery Act (Amendment) (FMA) 2006. The
objectives of the study is to identify issues related to statutory inspection in Malaysia and to make comparisons with
respect to the statutory inspection by Licensed Person adopted by other countries. The enforcement of Licensed
Person in Malaysia is still in not yet implemented although Section 40 (1A) in FMA (Revision) 2006 regulating on
Licensed Person had been introduced on 2006 and compared with other countries especially our neighboring country
Singapore. Based on the DOSH inspection data analysis, the main issues relating to statutory inspection in Malaysia
is the increment in backlog cases due to lack of number officers compare to the number of registered certificated
machineries in Malaysia. As a conclusion, the implementation of Licensed Person is crucial in Malaysia to reduce the
work and financial burden of Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) officer in enforcing FMA 1967
and also to improve the quality of statutory inspection for the safety in workplace.
Indoor pollution increasingly becomes a public concern. These concerns are related to energy efficiency in a
building. There are various ways in which it can ensure energy conservation can be achieved, including superinsulation
and reduced fresh air exchange. As a result, indoor air becomes stagnant and odours, thereafter contaminants of air will
accumulate and will certainly disrupt human health. It is quite difficult to make people comfortable in a building with
consumption of energy-saving and human health guaranteed. Indoor plants are one of the alternative solutions that
have been studied since the last three decades. This paper intends to review the abilities of indoor plants to purify air,
and the ways used by previous researchers to prove that indoor plants can treat the air. In general, it can be stated that
indoor plants are able to absorb various types of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). An advantage of indoor plants
to cure air from carcinogen gas is greatly needed for human health. Therefore, studies on indoor plants to neutralize
the air are gaining attention. Enclosed space or chamber is often used by researchers to test the ability of indoor plants
absorb gaseous toxins in their study; because it is easy to handle and can quickly determine the absorption rate. In the
other hand, environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and light are important to be taken into consideration
during the study. As a conclusion, it can be stated that the existence of indoor plants in a building is very reasonable,
because it can give positive impacts on human health and the total energy consumption.
This study aims to investigate a visual status and prevalence of visual problems in relation to eye safety and health amongst
visual display terminal (VDT) users in industries. A visual profile questionnaire (VPQ) and visual tests were conducted on workers
from 9 type of industries aged 20 to 60 years old in between October 2015 and June 2016. Workers with a history of exposure to VDT
more than 2 hours a day were used as a baseline for recruitment. Respondents who did not complete the visual profile questionnaires
(VPQ) and visual tests were excluded from the study. A total of 1214 respondents with mean aged of 39.33 ± 9.80 years have completed
the study. Most respondents show moderate to high in vision problems in related to VDT, low knowledge on visual hazards and policy
in relation to eye safety and health at the workplace and high percentage of not getting proper eye tests while serving their industries.
Visual Profile (VP) is needed as a key indicator to profile eye safety measures and the need for policy to help prevent eye problems and
improve employees’ productivity at workplace.
An awareness of possible risk factor in pesticides, by changing attitude towards the correct technique during spraying and
changing behavior can increase safety of workers safety as well as performance. However, there is a limited study and not highlighted
deeply in knowledge, attitude and practices of workers in palm oil plantation issue. Therefore , the objective of this paper is to identify
the relationship between knowledge, attitude and practices of pesticides among the plantation workers. The quantitative method were
used in this paper whereby 132 respondents as pesticide sprayer which represent 90% of the population of palm oil workers in Johor.
The result of spearman correlation indicates that there is significant relationship between knowledge and practices. It shows the
common pattern of high knowledge resulting high practices of the workers during spraying the pesticides at plantation. There is no
relationship between knowledge and attitude and between attitude and practice of the workers at the workplace. This paper shows that
knowledge need to be strengthen in agricultural communities of Johor in order to reduce health problem and sosial issue statistic and
prevent for any future accident. Human exposure to pesticides is an important health and sosial issue as it usually results in serious
health problems such as stroke, epilepsy, respiratory disorders and cancer. Death has been known to occur in some places as a result
of exposures to pesticides. Therefore, more impact knowledge-focused programs need to be arranged and implemented to inculcate
the better awareness of pesticides among palm oil workers, as without knowledge, people may become less careful and therefore are
exposed to pesticide poisoning and other long term exposure illness in the future.
Geographically, Malaysia is situated in the equatorial region, thus having a climate of hot and humid throughout the
year. Effect of heat stress and physical work load at construction industry need to be investigated because of the high number of
accidents. Thus, perception of physical workload and heat stress by the construction workers in Malaysia needed to be investigated
and documented. The aim of this paper is to establish a set of questionnaires containing the item generation regarding on physical
workload and the heat stress perception of construction workers. Physical workload factors such as fatigue, risks, concentration,
work rhythm, responsibility, satisfaction, and autonomy are inserted as the items in assessing the physical workload. While heat
stress are assessed using heat risk factors such as temperature, humidity, heat radiation, air movement, workload, clothing and
acclimatisation. A questionnaire has been developed resulted from various reviewing of literatures on physical workload and heat
stress and better suited to the Malaysia working environment.
In the electronic industry, prolonged standing works are sometimes required continuously for hours. The physical efforts
required lead to physiological and psychological fatigue resulting in reduced muscle performance. In order to recover from the muscle
exertion, one of the solutions is through the administrative control of a suitable work-rest schedule. In this study, two different workrest
conditions with identical total break time were investigated. An experiment was carried out when ten males’ workers were used
in each condition. The perception of the operator regarding to the body part discomfort were carried out by exploratory survey. Then,
Electromyography (EMG) was used to record the muscle fatigue of the participating workers throughout the experiment. Results
indicate infrequent-long rest promotes lesser muscle efforts compared to frequent short. The frequent short rest for 5 minutes (2X5
minutes) at first half of working day was not adequate to promote reduction on muscle fatigue. It was recommended that in order to
ensure adequate muscle recovery, a more frequent rest of more than 2 times at the half of day, and more than 5 minutes for each rest
should be given to workers.
The construction industry is one of the largest sectors in Malaysia. This industry has become one of the main contributors
for national economic development and consistently contributes 3% to 5% to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This
sector has also opened up job opportunities for various levels of employment. High demands and rapid urbanization offer huge
opportunities for registered contractors. Despite contributing in enhancing national economics, this sector has been regarded as one
of the most dangerous and hazardous workplaces due to the type of nature and the job activities at construction sites. According to
the International Labour Organization (ILO), 2.3 million fatalities related to occupational accidents and illnesses are estimated to
occur each year. Furthermore, 4 percent of world GDP is estimated to be lost due to occupational accidents and illnesses. The number
of fatality accidents in the construction industry was the highest with 652 cases of non-permanent disability (NPD) and permanent
disability (PD) accidents in the period 2007 to 2015, equivalent to 72.44 cases per year and representing 48.77% of the construction
industry. The huge gap between the number of accidents reported to SOCSO and DOSH becomes a major concern due to a rising
number of underreported cases of fatalities and injury in the construction sector, especially those involving foreign labour. The margin
between accidents reported to SOCSO and DOSH is 97.49%. Regards to rapid developments, safety measures to improve performance
management of OSH should be emphasized to reduce losses of life, property and productivity.
Workplace accident is still prevalent in the Malaysian industry sector. Although statistics indicates that the number of
accidents in the workplace is showing signs of decrease over the last five years, there is still room for improvements. According to
report, a majority of the workplace accidents in Malaysia happened in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). This shows that SME is
still lagging behind in ensuring the safety of their workplace. This can disrupt their business activities as workplace accidents bring
several negative effects. Therefore, this study explores the use of safety training to foster safety behaviour among employees. Surveys
were distributed to employees working in SME, Northern Corridor of Economic Region (NCER). The data was analysed and results
were presented. Suggestions to management in SME are made at the end of the paper.
This is a cross-sectional study with the objective to determine the association between complaints Musculoskeletal Disorders
(MSDs) and mismatch of the seats in lecture hall of Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS), Universiti Putra Malaysia
(UPM). A total of 132 respondents whom were undergraduate students were involved in this study consist of 47 male and 85 female.
Eight anthropometric measurement (height, weight, popliteal height, buttock-popliteal height, shoulder height, subscapular height,
elbow height and hip width while sitting) as well as five (5) furniture parameter dimensions (seat height, seat depth, seat width,
upper edge backrest height and desk height) were taken. Instruments used were questionnaire modified from Nordic Musculoskeletal
Questionnaire, Martyn anthropometer set, measuring tape, height scale and weighing scale. Findings showed 51.5% mismatch of
seat height, 5.3% mismatch of seat depth, 94.7% mismatch of desk height and 18.2% mismatch of upper edge of back rest. For the
prevalence MSDs in the past seven (7) days, 61.4% reported low back pain followed by neck pain (50%) and upper back pain (43.9%).
There was significant difference between genders in anthropometric body measurement. Significant association were found between
MSDs and mismatch χ2 = 5.406, p < 0.05. In conclusion, there was an association between MSDs and ergonomics furniture of lecture
halls in FMHS, UPM. Based on the findings, it is recommended that in the event of long lecture hour, intermittent break should be
allowed for students to stretch, move or better yet assume different posture such as standing or walk.
In the new global economy, workplace safety has become a central issue among companies all over the world.
It is becoming difficult to ignore that this trend has also been happening in Malaysia especially the manufacturing
sector. The worrying trend can be seen from the increasing number of workplace accidents reported by Department
of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), Malaysia in manufacturing companies. In recent years, researchers have
shown an interest in studying the role of safety leadership to reduce workplace accidents. It is found that safety
leadership plays a significant role in ensuring a safe and sound workplace. Due to this concern, this paper attempts
to provide a conceptualization of safety leadership from the perspective of Malaysia’s manufacturing sector. It is
proposed that positive safety leadership lead to a reduction of workplace accidents. In response to this matter, it is
hypothesized that the higher level of safety leadership will positively affect the lower level of workplace accidents.
A questionnaire from Wu et al. (2008) will be adopted to explain the conceptualization of safety leadership, where it
is expected that the concept of safety leadership practised in Malaysia’s manufacturing sector has a similar meaning
from the perspective of western researchers.
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the upper limb (WRMSDs-UL) account for one of the largest types of occupational disorders worldwide. This broad term includes several disorders, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, tension neck syndrome and lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow) which are generally caused by poor postures, repetitive strain and psychosocial factors. Various workplace interventions have been investigated and employed to prevent the different WRMSDs-UL, but a common consensus to address the problem has yet to be achieved. This paper reviews and discusses the efficacies of some interventions which have been tested for the most prevalent type of WRMSDs-UL, carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The focus will be on computer users who developed CTS out of the prolonged and repetitive use of keyboards and pointing devices. The interventions studied include engineering design, management strategies, personal development, medical treatment and multi-dimensional approaches. Outcome of the study reveals that the most effective approach would be one that is multi-dimensional in nature, with the inclusion of at least two or more intervention strategies at the same time.
The question about which is the best approach to facilitate the effective safety evaluation, training processes
involved have become and on-going debate. This article reviews current approaches to evaluation of safety training. It
was focusing theoretical framework suggested and used in the previous literature. Furthermore, possible summary of
several methodologies of safety training evaluation presented.
Stress reduces the performance and productivity of employees.
One of the most important stressors originate from organizational factors,
which are decision latitude, psychological demand, social support and job
insecurity. This creates four kinds of jobs: passive, active, low strain and high
strain. The objective of the study is to determine the association between
organizational factors with occupational stress and cortisol level among
lecturers in University Selangor. This cross-sectional study used a purposive
sampling, which involved 45 lecturers from various faculties. The instrument
used in this study was Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) which is a
Psychosocial Job Assessment Instrument designed by Karasek et al., (1998).
The questionnaire has been translated to Malay version by Edimansyah et al.,
(2006). 10ml of blood sample was collected from each respondent by certified
phlebotomist. Results from the statistical analysis showed that majority of the
respondents were female (75.6%), aged below forty years old (82.2%), married
(77.8%) and hold a master degree (68.9%). Most of the respondents were
found having low decision latitude 35(77.5%). Majority of the respondents
were also found in passive group 13(28.9%) which were having low
psychological job demand and low decision latitude, while others are in low
strain 11(24.4%), high strain 11(24.4%) and active group 10(22.2%)
respectively. There was a significant association between two organizational
factors with occupational stress level, which are decision latitude and
psychological job demand (p0.05). As a
conclusion, two out of four organizational factors, which are decision latitude
and psychological job demand showed a significant association with
occupational stress levels. Cortisol as one of stress biomarkers may not be
significant due to small sample size.
This study aims to assess the level of Knowledge, Attitude and
Practices (KAP) on Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) from employer perspectives
in Malaysia industries. A developed KAP questionnaires were distributed and
returned by 39 employers. Most employer show good scores to majority of items in
Knowledge and Attitude sections. However, good practices are still lacking as the
scores are quite low for half of the items. Kruskal-Wallis test for independent sample
was used to test the relationship between gender and KAP scores. It was found out
that gender is linked with few items in Knowledge and Attitude section (r < 0.05)
while no indication of relationship with Practice scores. As the number of reported
MSDs cases are increasing in Malaysia, hence understanding of KAP factors are
crucial in order to tackle the problem.
Introduction: Workers in hospitals are exposed to various occupational hazards such as high level disinfectants (HLD).
Disinfection is an essential component of the endoscope reprocessing. In the Endoscopy Unit of Queen Elizabeth Hospital,
Succindialdehyde (SA) is used as the disinfectant for endoscope reprocessing. SA has properties that are similar to formaldehyde
in regard to contact allergies and toxicity. The purpose of this case study is to describe the occurrence of work related symptoms
(WRS), the proper use of personal protective attire (PPE) and the need of pre-employment health enquiries for those exposed to SA.
Methodology: This was a cross sectional case study. Twenty eight gastrointestinal assistants (GIA) from the thirty two exposed staff
working with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s Endoscopy Unit, who fulfilled the study criteria, were given a modified Respiratory
Surveillance Questionnaire. This questionnaireis used as the health surveillance tool for the staff exposed to the occupational
respiratory hazard by the Occupational Health Unit, University of Edinburgh. Results: Most of the GIAs complained of headache
(85.7%), skin irritations (60.7%) followed by 57.1% watery eyes, wheeziness and runny nose. Majority (92.9%) of the GIAs wore
personal protective equipment (PPE) during the disinfection procedure. Pre-employment enquiries regarding asthma, skin and
mucosal sensitivity problems and lung function were not made to any of the GIAs. Only 14.3% of them do annual health surveillances.
Conclusion: Most of the GIAs, 92.9% experienced at least one WRS despite wearing PPE. Staff exposed to the chemical disinfectants
should wear proper PPE and do annual health surveillances. By practising this, we may avoid WRS and treat the staff accordingly.
Construction industry is one of the major contributors towards Malaysian economy and socio-economy. It is an important
industry gearing Malaysia towards developed nation status. However, fatalities in this industry are a crucial problem. Number of
fatalities in this industry is the highest compare to other industries registered in Malaysia. The contributing factors can be separated
into immediate (human and worksite elements) and underlying (management and external). Occupational safety and health (OSH)
management is a challenge in the construction industry due to its hazardous nature. A framework of construction OSH management
consisting of policy, process, personnel and incentive elements were tested. 13 respondents from 13 residential projects comprising of
high-rise and low-rise in Pulau Pinang were interviewed. It was found that the immediate factors are being more recognized by the
respondents compare to the underlying factors. Human element is perceived as the most significant contributor, while the external
element is the least significant. In terms of construction OSH management, process and personnel elements are the most significant in
developing an effective OSH management programme.