Students’ knowledge, attitude and practice towards safety and health are one of the important aspects of their learning
process in school. Negligence of this aspect can increase the risk of accidents among students. This study was conducted to assess the
level of knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of students toward safety and health aspects in school. This study was participated
by 410 Form Four students that were randomly selected. They are from SMK Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah 1 (SARS1), SMK Taman
Dato’ Harun (SMKTDH) and SMK Agama Sheikh Hj. Mohd Said (SHAMS). Questionnaire used consists of demographic components,
knowledge, attitude and practice items towards safety and health aspects. Majority of the respondents are female students (58.3%)
while the rest are male students (41.7%). Higher percentage of respondents are from SMKTDH (59.5%) followed by SHAMS (24.1%)
and SARS1 (16.3%). This study found that the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of students toward safety and health aspects
in school are high. The mean score of all knowledge, attitude and practice items in the questionnaire are 4.29±0.40, 4.07±0.46,
and 4.13±0.48, respectively. In addition, this study found that the school factors are significantly associated with student’s attitude
and practice, while the gender factor is only significantly associated with student’s attitude towards safety and health in school.
Meanwhile, correlation analysis showed a significant relationship between student’s knowledge, attitude and practice (p
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.
Poor IAQ would lead to the occurrence of Sick Building Syndrome
(SBS) and other symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the IAQ and the symptoms
of SBS among the office workers in the two selected buildings (old and new). A
comparative cross sectional study was conducted among 90 office workers from an
old building (26 years of age) and a new building (5 years of age). The SBS symptoms
were assessed utilising the questionnaires adopted from Industry Code of Practice
(ICOP) 2010 while IAQ parameters were monitored using the Handheld 3016 IAQ
Particle Counter and Multi-Function Ventilation Meter. All the parameters studied
were below the standard limit as set by the Department of Occupational Safety and
Health (DOSH) and the United States of America’s Environmental Protection Agency
(US EPA) except for air velocity in the old building which was lower than the
acceptable standard range. The levels of PM10 and total particulate matter (TPM) in
the old building was significantly higher as compared to the new building (PM10: Z=
-2.495, p = 0.013 and TPM: Z = -2.873, p = 0.014). The SBS prevalence was 51.1%
among respondents at the new building while 64.4% for old building. However, the
difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). There was a significant
association of drowsiness among respondents between old and new building (2=
4.050, p = 0.044). Therefore, in order to ensure a good IAQ, regular maintenance of
ventilation and control measures should be conducted.
Recent fire accidents in schools have given rise to the safety
issues. Training on fire safety is very important to help improve the safety aspect
in schools while perceptions of fire safety training among school teachers are
crucial in order to identify methods to prevent accidents from recurring. This
study was conducted in order to analyze the perceptions of school teachers
towards fire safety training in schools. Survey questionnaires were distributed
among 400 school teachers from 111 schools randomly selected from ten District
Education Offices (DEO) in Kelantan. The results were analyzed using
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). They were based on 32% and
68% male and female respondents respectively. Descriptive analysis shows that
most of the school teachers agreed with the need for fire safety training to be
conducted in schools. This study suggests that school teachers require fire safety
training in order for them to help improve fire safety in schools. Thus, teachers
will be able to teach their students on the importance of fire safety, how to
prevent fire and actions to be taken if an emergency happens in schools. It is
hoped that the number of fire accidents in schools can be reduced with the school
communities’ commitment towards safety.
In order to have an effective preventive measures to reduce accidents
at the workplace, organisations need to take a robust step to increase safety
participation in Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS).
Accidents will affect employees' morale for work and employers will bear the
consequence of the direct and indirect recovery cost. Specifically, accidents will
cost big company’s good reputation. This study intends to examine the
relationship of organizational safety factors (management safety commitment,
safety training, extrinsic reward, intrinsic reward, employee involvement, safety
communication and safety advice) towards safety participation in OSHMS using
the resource-based view (RBV) and knowledge-based view (KBV) theories. A
total of 100 responses were analysed from the Malaysian manufacturing firms
with OHSAS 18001 or MS 1722 certifications. Data were analysed using
the Smart Partial Least Square (SmartPLS). It is found that safety training and
employee involvement have direct relationship towards safety participation in
OSHMS. Specifically, the safety advice showed a significant moderating effect on
the relationship between management safety commitment and safety
participation in OSHMS. The findings of this study are useful to both OSH
practitioners and organisation who wish to understand and apply safety capital
towards safety participation in OSHMS with specific reference to the role of
safety advice played by safety professionals.
This is a conceptual paper to study the factors that affect the
safety practitioner’s perception towards safety and health risk assessment,
namely HIRARC at oil palm plantation. Retrospective safety and health data
were obtained and analysed. Factors identified were both confusions on
hazard description and interpretation of risk assessment matrix. This paper
will examine those factors and make recommendations for future research in
Malaysia.
The low back is usually associated with the lumbar spine which supports the entire weight of the upper body and significantly, is vital to the body mobility. Injury to the surrounding soft tissues can cause mild to debilitating symptoms due to muscle strain and ligament sprain. The causes of injury to the lower back are probably due to sudden twisting movement, poor posture position at work and manual handling of heavy objects or with twisting or bending movements while lifting. An Ergonomic Risk Assessment was carried out on a dental laboratory worker who complained of unresolved low back ache after a year on treatment and follow up at the outpatient department of a health clinic. From the various investigative methods used, it was found that the worker in question was placed in a situation that will over time encourage her to develop musculoskeletal disease. Our recommendations for change include immediate awareness and training in ergonomic principles of work and to report all cases so that appropriate action can be taken, reassess the workstation and environment of work, job enrichment, and creating a conducive environment for work. Once the changes have been implemented, a review will be necessary in three months time.
The global demand for palm oil is growing, thus prompting an
increase in the global production. Such increasing demand for palm oil is due to
palm oil’s relatively cheap price and versatile advantage both in edible and nonedible
applications. Being world second largest producers, Malaysia’s palm oil
industry is growing in complexity and successively to succeed on the global level by
accounts for about 30% of the world production of palm oil in 2015/16. But,
reliability and safety issues are still problematic areas that need to be addressed by
all parties in this industry e.g. millings, refineries and oleochemicals. Although there
are laws and guidelines that provide protection for reliability, safety and health such
as OSHA 1994, OHSAS 18001 and MS 1722, palm oil industry is relatively lacking
behind in process safety as several catastrophic accidents occurred were believed
caused by process safety failures. Therefore, process safety management in palm oil
industry must be enhanced to standard similar to other industries such as chemical
process and oil and gas industries, so that it can prevent major hazard accidents
which can result in fatality, asset damage and environmental impact. This papers
investigates the needs of process safety management in palm oil industry and
proposes a generic process safety management framework which may be useful for
palm oil industry. From the study, it can be concluded that proactive actions are
certainly required to overcome process safety issue in palm oil industry as several
catastrophic accidents occurred were believed caused by process failures.
The purpose of this study is to assess the preferred temperature
(Tpref) of human participants exposed to air-conditioned temperature variations in
climate chamber experiments. Findings were later compared with an earlier Tpref
experiment by de Dear et. al. (1991). Twenty nine healthy college-age participants
underwent thirty minutes of preconditioned session before casting their thermal
preference and thermal sensation votes every 10 minutes for the remaining 150
minutes of the experiment. These affective votes were correlated against average of
ambient air temperature and participant's body temperature taken 30 minutes
before the experiment ends. The mean Tpref was 25.1°C (± 1.2), mean skin
temperature of 33.7°C (± 0.6) and mean body temperature of 36.3°C (±0.3). It can
be concluded that Tpref gathered in the preferred temperature experiment shows
significant difference in participants’ temperature preference which was 0.6 °C
cooler than earlier experiment suggesting change in how indoor ambient
temperature is preferred. In addition, mean skin temperature and gender did not
influence participants’ Tpref.
Pesticides are commonly used for pest control in oil palm
plantations. The knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) while handling pesticides
may potentially result in adverse health effects among the estate workers. The aim of
this study is to determine the KAP of pesticides used and the capacity of selfreporting
health conditions among workers in palm oil plantations. A crosssectional
study was conducted to investigate the KAP and its self-reporting health
symptoms by using questionnaires and face-to-face interviews to 120 male estate
workers who use pesticides in their daily work routine in the oil palm plantation. At
least 85.8% of respondents had a good knowledge of pesticide used, 46.7% of them
indicated neutral level of attitude on the pesticides’ usage, and 68.3% of them
demonstrated a good practice while handling mixture of pesticides. Overall, there is
a significant association between the practices of pesticide usage with the selfreporting
health symptoms, such as dizziness, excessive vision, cough,
nausea/vomiting, redness of skin, difficulty in breathing, skin rashes, blurred vision,
excessive sweating and hand tremor. More than half of the estate workers indicated
a moderate to good knowledge, attitude and practices level of pesticide handling in
oil palm plantations. This study suggests that the self-reporting symptoms are real
and not over-reporting by workers. The increase in KAP of pesticides usage among
these workers have highlighted the necessity to improve the traditional field training
method of safe handling of pesticide to a sustainable field practical-based learning.
The latter training approach is to engage theory into practice.
This study aims to determine the awareness level of safety
management and safety behavior among SMEs workers. Safety management as a
subsystem in the overall management of the organization. It is designed to control
hazards that can affect the safety and health of workers. Small and Medium Enterprise
(SMEs) in Malaysia continue to face many challenges both traditionally and new.
80% to 90% of occupational accidents occurred involving worker of SMEs industry.
A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the involved small medium
industries. Questionnaires form that consist of three sections, namely socio
demographic, safety management and safety behavior. This study was conducted at
selected SMEs located in Klang Valley. 226 workers responded. In order to interpret
the level of awareness among the respondents, a 3-level scale (High: 3.68 – 5.00,
Moderate: 2.34 – 3.67, Low: 1.00 – 2.33) based on the mean score was used suggested
by Ashari & Mahmood. The findings show that the highest level of awareness was
safety behavior while the lowest awareness level was safety promotion policy
respectively. Findings also showed that, there were moderate correlation between
safety management and safety behavior. Understanding the concept of the OSH
management system will help us to understand the application of OSH management
system in Malaysia. OSH Management very important to prevent accident, ill health
& injury at workplace towards development of safety culture.
Safety behaviour is important in preventing industrial accident.
Safety leadership attribute by the supervisors is one of the determinants of safety
behaviour among the employees. This study aimed to determine the influence of
employer’s safety leadership towards worker’s safety behaviour within Small and
Medium Enterprises (SME)-Manufacturing in Negeri Sembilan. Three independent
variables representing safety leadership namely safety motivation, safety concern
and safety policy were selected whilst safety compliance and safety participation
were the dimensions used to measure safety behaviour. Self-administered
questionnaire were distributed and answered by 210 employees of Negeri
Sembilan’s SME-Manufacturing. The results revealed that safety concern and safety
policy had significantly influenced safety compliance. Whilst, safety motivation and
safety concern determined the workers’ safety participation. No significant influence
found by safety motivation towards safety compliance as well as safety policy
towards safety participation. Safety concern was the important component of safety
leadership as it consistently explained the variance in all dimensions of safety
behaviour.
Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) nowadays is an established risk assessment method used worldwide for the evaluation of risks on onshore plant and offshore facilities which associated with the major hazard installations. However, there are still many issues on QRA used. These include lack of consistency, complexity of the overall model structure, incorporation of new data, methodology and model analysis. Common problem observed for the onshore QRA methodology is conservatism of fire and explosion consequence results using DNV PhastRisk 6.7 software which is mainly contributed from the high release rate due to loss of containment. This paper presents an alternative way to predict the actual release rate for fire and explosion modelling which called limiting flowrate technique. This method has been applied for calculating risk in Onshore Gas Terminal (OGT) Plant. Adopting the limiting flowrate technique has provide more precise model towards real scenarios. Challenges facing during this research such as using the unmodified United Kingdom (UK) HSE hydrocarbon release database without integrate with the actual failure frequencies from the plant, the risk results tend to be much higher than actual experience. It should be noted that the development of improved onshore risk model has been used as an example for this research but many of the issues are equally applicable to offshore studies as well.
The incident involving hydrogen release in industry has become a major concern since numerous incidents were observed to have occured over the years. This paper is designed to do the consequence modelling and analysis using PHAST Simulator for the release rate, potential fire and vulnerability to human by lethality versus probit simulated at 5 mm, 35 mm and 70 mm leak scenarios and three types of atmospheric stability at hydrogenation plant in Telok Panglima Garang. The simulation was carried out by inputting data of leak scenario, meteorological data, material data and process data related to the hydrogenation plant. The simulation results were analyzed and discussed on the discharge rate, dispersion concentration and effect of jet fire such as flame length, downwind distance and lethality for radiation intensity level of 4 kW/m2 , 12.5 kW/m2 and 37.5 kW/m2 . Based on the results, the discharge rate and radiation intensity are dependent on the leak sizes regardless of the different atmospheric conditions. However, the dispersion is dependent on both atmospheric stability and leak sizes. Lastly, the lethality and area of impact are simulated from the radiation intensity produced by the jet fire for each leak size. To conclude, adoption of PHAST software is vital for consequence modelling as this software is able to illustrate the outcomes of hazards due to loss of containment and with this will enable related personnel to respond effectively to any hazardous incidents. As a recommendation, hydrogen fixed gas detectors are proposed for installations at specific location after taking into account the smallest leak that may happen which is at 5 mm leak size.
Company A is a brownfield refinery that had been in service for over 25 years and has its own system to generate GOX for its needed utility usage. Noting of the hazards of GOX and in consideration of an aged refinery, this research is of the intent to evaluate the risk of GOX in the aspect of personnel and process safety; and to provide recommendation or mitigations planning with regards to Company A’s existing hardware through Bow Tie review. The analysis was done taking into consideration the data compiled as well as the inherited Process Safety Assessment (PSA) findings of Company A that served as secondary data to this research. It was observed that Company A personnel are well versed with the risk and hazards of GOX system and through the plant rejuvenation and material upgrade works, the hazards were mitigated to a lower risk within the risk matrix. The implementation and upgrade works had served to add more barriers to the left side of the bow tie as well as ensuring that the aged complex is well equipped with needed safeguarding strategies (from inherent safer design, passive & active safeguarding and procedural controls) to avoid the occurrence of potential oxygen fire or explosion incident.
The effects of propylene stored in pressurized spherical vessel were investigated using radiation & explosion modeling using PHAST 6.7 software in one of the refinery in Malaysia. The simulations were performed for various weather conditions with different leak scenarios in deterministic approach. Modeling approach was standard with current industry practice. Resulting events such as jet fire, vapor cloud explosion, boiling liquid evaporating vapor explosion effects shown in thermal radiation and overpressure towards targeted technical buildings. The effects of resulting jet fire flame length increase with release rate and explosion overpressure effects increase with degree of confinement and volume fraction respectively. The results were reviewed, interpreted against industry standard. The sensitivity cases show that, using lower inventory with moderate operating conditions will keep the consequence in acceptable region. This consequence analysis will form a basis for layout development, safety distance and fire zone segregation during conceptual design stage. Propylene storage conditions, layout arrangements and blast protections were recommended as part of preventive and mitigative measures.
Air pollution in steel making operations effect to respiratory health. This study aimed to measure the dust exposure and evaluate the respiratory health among steel workers. A cross sectional study was conducted among 402 male workers. Respiratory symptoms using British Medical Research Council (BMRC) Questionnaire while lung function was measured The airborne dust [PM2.5, PM10, and Total Particulate Matter (TPM)] were monitored by Handheld 3016 Counter. All the parameters studied exceeded the limit of Malaysian guideline standard. Prevalence of chronic phlegm, chest of tightness, and shortness of breath were 35.8 %, 32.8 %, 23.4 %, and 22.4 %, respectively. significant differences between shortness of breath and work section (2=9.236, p=0.026) and %FEV1/FVC with work section [F (3, 3.98=3.194), p=0.025]. Smoking was associated with chronic cough (Adj OR =1.07, 95% CI: phlegm (Adj OR =1.05, 95% CI: 1.03 - 1.08), and shortness of breath (Adj OR = 1.05, 95% CI: 1.00 past respiratory illnesses was associated with chest tightness (Adj OR = 2.24, 95% CI: 1.04 - 4.84) and (Adj OR = 4.16, 95% CI: 1.92 - 9.92). Duration of employment was associated with FEV1 (β=-0.025, 0.020) while past respiratory illnesses was associated with %FEV1/FVC (β =-1.784, 95% CI: -3.017 workers are at risk of developing respiratory symptoms and lung function impairment.
Today, more accidents reported in school, resulting not only minor injuries but also severe injuries such as fire in schools, mercury spills and falling from high places. The study was aimed at measuring the level of occupational safety and health practices in schools. The study was conducted at 205 schools in Kelantan, Malaysia. This study is a semi-quantitative study using observation method. Data collection is conducted based on Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control (HIRARC) Guidelines provided by the Department of Occupational Safety and Health, Malaysia. Hazard identification, risk assessment and risk control are determined using the HIRARC form. The findings were measured by determining the discrete data according to the number of low, medium and high-risk levels found. The study found that there were two dominant hazards namely physical hazard and ergonomic hazard. Therefore, the management should increase and improve classroom safety awareness to ensure safety and health of all occupants.
communication, full compliance and good behavior) as among the crucial elements required to be possessed by the principal employers in three sectors, namely manufacturing, public services and construction. In relation to this, this paper will describe the development and validation of instruments prior to the measurement of principal employers’ roles and responsibilities in the implementation of OSH. Three assessment tools were developed, namely the Benchmarking Interview, Questionnaire and Workplace Inspection. Fifteen companies were selected for the benchmarking interview, 50 employers conveniently selected for the survey interview (covering three sectors) and 90 employers selected for the workplace inspection (30 respondents for each sector). The development of benchmarking interview and workplace inspection scores are briefly discussed while the main focus is on the validation of the survey constructs (or items). The reliability check on 53 items representing four elements (i.e., Commitment, Communication, Compliance, Behaviour) of employers’ roles and responsibilities in the implementation of OSH showed that the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient is more than 0.90 which indicates that the internal consistency is extremely reliable. It also indicates that the set of items in each element are closely related and well understood by the respondents. Validity check on the items based on the Rasch measurement infit and outfit mean square statistics and standardized z-score found that nine items had misfitting values and finally corrected for further analysis. This study had shown that a valid and reliable instruments are important in ensuring that accurate and precise findings are obtained in measuring the roles and responsibilities of principal employer in the implementation of OSH.