Development of welding fumes health index (WFHI) for welding workplace’s safety and health assessment

Hariri, Azian and Paiman, Nuur Azreen and Leman, Abdul Mutalib and Md. Yusof, Mohammad Zainal (2014) Development of welding fumes health index (WFHI) for welding workplace’s safety and health assessment. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 43 (8). pp. 1045-1059. ISSN 2251-6085

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Abstract

"Background: This study aimed to develop an index that can rank welding workplace that associate well with possible health risk of welders. Methods: Welding Fumes Health Index (WFHI) were developed based on data from case studies conducted in Plant 1 and Plant 2. Personal sampling of welding fumes to assess the concentration of metal constituents along with series of lung function tests was conducted. Fifteen metal constituents were investigated in each case study. Index values were derived from aggregation analysis of metal constituent concentration while significant lung functions were recog-nized through statistical analysis in each plant. Results: The results showed none of the metal constituent concentration was exceeding the permissible exposure limit (PEL) for all plants. However, statistical analysis showed significant mean differences of lung functions between welders and non-welders. The index was then applied to one of the welding industry (Plant 3) for verification purpose. The developed index showed its promising ability to rank welding workplace, according to the multiple constituent concentrations of welding fumes that associates well with lung functions of the investigated welders. Conclusion: There was possibility that some of the metal constituents were below the detection limit leading to '0' value of sub index, thus the multiplicative form of aggregation model was not suitable for analysis. On the other hand, maximum or minimum operator forms suffer from compensation issues and were not considered in this study. "

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Welding fumes; Index; Aggregation analysis; Malaysia
Subjects:	T Technology > TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery T Technology > T Technology (General) > T173.2-174.5 Technological change
Divisions:	Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering > Department of Mechanical Engineering
Depositing User:	Mrs. Siti Noraida Miskan
Date Deposited:	23 Dec 2021 08:30
Last Modified:	23 Dec 2021 08:30
URI:	http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/id/eprint/4921

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