A Study on the Health Risk Agents in the Workplace of a General Hospital

Kim, Yang Ok; Kim, Ki Soon; Park, Jong; Ryu, So Yeon; Yang, Hee Yeon

Abstract

To evaluate the health risk of the workplace environment of a general hospital toward the hospital workers, a questionnaire survey on the perception of risk at the workplace environment and environmental measurements at 27 locations with 240 workers in the hospital were made from October 25th, 1993 to October 30th, 1994. The results were as follows; 1. By the environmental measurements, 86 workers(36%) were found to be exposed to poor or harmful degree of general illumination, 193 workers(80%) were exposed to poor or harmful local illumination, 34 workers(14%) were exposed to poor or harmful degree of thermal condition and l80 workers(75%) were exposed to poor or harmful noise level, but nobody was exposed to poor or harmful dust and toluene concentration. Also nobody was exposed to poor or harmful level of radiation or anticancer/antibiotic agents. 2. The subjective perceptions on the environmental conditions felt by the workers were different from the objective findings by the environmental measurements. The workers underscored the poor illumination state and overscored the dust concentrations. Also workers oversensitized about the thermal condition, the noise level, the radiation level, the toluene concentration and anticancer/antibiotic agents. 3. The sources of noise were the dialogue(179 workers) and the office instruments(131workers). The sources of dust came from the clothes(108 workers) and the building materials(79 workers). 4. The questionnaire survey showed that the 28 workers were exposed to poor or harmful level of the antibiotics, 10 workers to alkali or acid and 6 workers to drug dust in the pharmacy but the above findings could not be proved by the environmental measurements.