Response of the sediment geochemistry of the Changjiang River (Yangtze River) to the impoundment of the Three Gorges Dam

Based on the measurement of major and trace elements in suspended sediments in the low reaches of the Changjiang River during throughout a whole hydrologic year, the origins, seasonal variations, and fluxes of multielements and the human impacts on multielements transport processes have been analyzed along with the influence of weathering in the Changjiang River basin. The results show that most element contents were high in both autumn and winter and low in summer, which was largely caused by the dilution of discharge. Weathering detritus in the Changjiang River basin is the main source of most elements in suspended sediments. However, riverine pollution could bring more loadings of Cd, Pb, As and Zn into river water than it did a few decades ago. The annual average fluxes of Cd, Pb and Zn, which are major contamination elements, to the sea were 179 ± 21 tons/year, 7810 ± 675 tons/year, and 12,000 ± 1320 tons/year,respectively, in which approximately 8.7%, 11.9% and 2.7% of their loadings, respectively,were contributed by pollution inputs. Element exports mainly occurred in the summer(44.4%–57.4%) in the lower part of the Changjiang River. A general relationship between sediment retention and element content suggests a positive feedback mechanism for the decreased number of particles, in which element riverine loadings are reduced due to the enhanced trapping effect by the Three Gorges Dam(TGD). Compared to those in 1980,current element shares of the Changjiang River compared to the global budget have declined due to the construction of the TGD.     

市政污水氧化沟处理工艺对人类致病菌群落组成的影响——以南京市某污水处理厂为例

人类致病菌(HPB)在市政污水中广泛存在,对人类健康产生严重威胁.以南京市某污水处理厂为例,采集1年内污水处理厂进水、污泥和生化处理出水样品,利用16S rRNA基因PCR扩增和高通量测序技术解析了 HPB群落组成特征,研究了生化处理过程中水质理化指标与HPB群落组成的相关性.结果表明,进水和生化处理出水中HPB的检出...     

Climate change and human health in Latin America: drivers, effects, and policies

Many people would be increasingly affected by living under critical conditions in Latin America if, as expected, global warming aggravates disease and pest transmission processes. Heat waves and air pollution would increase heat-related diseases and illness episodes in large cities. Fire smoke has been associated with irritation of the throat, lung and eyes, and respiratory problems. Climate extreme increases associated with climate change would cause physical damage, population displacement, and adverse effects on food production, freshwater availability and quality. It would also increase the risks of infectious and vector-borne diseases. Climate change impacts the geographical range, seasonality, and the incidence rate of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. Climate-related ecological changes may expand cholera transmission, particularly among populations in low-laying tropical coastal areas. El Niño conditions may affect the incidence of infectious diseases, such as malaria. Ocean warming would increase temperature-sensitive toxins produced by phytoplankton, which could cause more frequent contamination of seafood. A clearer understanding on the current role of climate change in disease patterns will be able to improve forecasts of potential future impacts of projected climate change and support action to reduce such impacts.     

A summary and synthesis of procedural regulations and standards—Informing a procedures writer's guide

Well-written procedures are an integral part of any industrial organization for safe operation, managing risks, and continuous improvement. Regulatory bodies around the world require industries to have current, accurate, and appropriate procedures for most processes. Although the importance of procedures is recognized by all industries in general, significant incidents still occur due to procedural breakdowns. Some of the procedural breakdowns come from obvious problems such as the procedure not being available or the procedure being wrong. However, some incidents have occurred when correct procedures were available and the operator used those procedures. In these instances, the reason workers do not follow procedures correctly may be attributable the procedure being presented or designed in a manner that does not sufficiently communicate the information in a manner that is easily and quickly understood. This indicates that procedure writers may need more guidance on how to write and design procedures so they accomplish this. To effectively manage risk, procedures need to be technically correct (and regulatory compliant) and usable. As part of this, the current work is focused on developing a systematic approach to a procedure writer's guide that includes a regulatory compliant component. The work presented here consists of an effort to identify procedure-writing practices necessary to ensure regulatory compliance by summarizing a large sample of regulations and standards from several industries. The regulations and standards were organized to reflect common ideas and the implications in terms of human factors needs for procedure design were identified. This information will be used as part of the development of a writer's guide that accounts for human factors (HF) that includes explanations of HF implications and empirical support for each of the guidelines. The novelty of the method and information presented here is in the idea of leveraging the cumulative information available regarding procedures in regulations and standards. Incorporating this information into a procedure's writers guide in this manner may not only facilitate procedure being regulatory compliant for facilities in different geographies of the world, but could also support their being written with considerations for human performance.     

A taxonomy of performance influencing factors for human reliability analysis of emergency tasks

This paper introduces the process for, and the result of, the selection of performance influencing factors (PIFs) for the use in human reliability analysis (HRA) of emergency tasks in nuclear power plants. The approach taken in this study largely consists of three steps. First, a full-set PIF system is constructed from the collection and review of existing PIF taxonomies. Secondly, PIF candidates are selected from the full-set PIF system, considering the major characteristics of emergency situations and the basic criteria of PIF for use in HRA. Finally, a set of PIFs is established by structuring representative PIFs and their detailed subitems from the candidates. As a result, a set of PIFs comprised of the 11 representative PIFs and 39 subitems was developed.     

Joint analysis of process and operator performance in chemical process operational safety

Independent studies of case histories by the Health and Safety Commission in the UK and by a Honeywell led industrial consortium world-wide showed that human errors represent the major cause of failure in process plant operation. In contrast to this discovery the majority of previous studies on computer aided systems for fault detection and diagnosis has focused on the process side. This paper presents a methodology, which can involve human factors into the development of systems for automatic identification and diagnosis of abnormal operations and develops methods and techniques that can be used to simultaneously capture, characterise and assess the performance of operators as well as of the process. A joint process–operator simulation platform is developed which is used as a test-bed for carrying out the study. The process part is a simulator, which simulates in high fidelity the dynamic behaviour of the process that is subject to the influence of various disturbances and operators’ interventions. The operator module is developed as a real-time expert system, which emulates operator’s behaviour in interpretation of received signals, and planning and execution of decisions. The interaction between the two modules is managed through an interaction module, which handles the real-time exchange of data using Dynamic Data Exchange. The interaction module also contains the toolkits for analysing the dynamic behaviour of the joint process–operator system. The method and system are illustrated using a simulated case study.     

Research on 10-year tendency of China coal mine accidents and the characteristics of human factors

The trend of China coal mine accidents in the latest 10 years was studied and the human factors in these accidents were analyzed by multi-dimensional statistic analysis. It shows that the number of major coal mine accidents and the death toll in the accidents were decreasing steadily, while sporadic death accidents still accounted for the largest percentage of deaths. Gas outburst accidents, gas explosion accidents and mine water accidents remained the major part of the whole story and subject to close attention. Among the causes of these accidents, human factors accounted for 94.09%, of which intentional violation, mismanagement and defective design accounted for 35.43%, 55.12%, 3.54% respectively. Improper operational and management practices in which the safety system, procedures and specifications were neglected or broken were still key roots of China coal mine accidents.     

A comparison of required coefficient of friction for both feet in level walking

The required coefficient of friction (RCOF) is one of the critical elements in determining whether a slip incident might occur. Most researchers, when measuring RCOF, do not differentiate between the two feet of the same participant under the same walking condition. Results from a recent study (Chang et al., 2010) indicated that the stochastic distributions of the RCOF of both feet were different in 76% of the cases. Using the previous data (Chang et al., 2010), this paper presents a comparison of the RCOF for both feet of 50 participants under four level walking conditions resulting from two footwear types and two walking speeds using a t-test, commonly used by safety professionals to compare two pools of data. The current results indicated that 78% of the RCOF data showed a statistically significant difference between the RCOF from two feet for the same participant under each walking condition. The results of the logistic regression analysis used to identify factors that contributed to the outcome of the t-test indicated that the walking speed was the only factor with a statistical significance (p = 0.044).     

Exploration of relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior in the Chinese oil industry

Safety performance is comprised of two components, safety compliance and safety participation. However, relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, scales for safety compliance and safety participation were revised for use in the oil industry, and job burnout scale was developed on the basis of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). A structural equation model was then employed to investigate the interactions of these factors for 238 front-line oil workers from the PetroChina Huabei Oilfield Company in China. From the results, it was determined that workers' unsafe behavior could not be reduced significantly solely from these two dimensions of safety performance. Compared with safety participation, safety compliance was found to have a greater influence on unsafe behavior. However, job burnout was found to be a significant moderator between these two components and unsafe behavior. Furthermore, it was determined that oil workers' occupational psychological health conditions must be taken into account to improve organizational safety management and reduce workers’ unsafe behavior.     

Impact of human development on safety consciousness in construction

The International Labour Organization (ILO) reports that the risk of fatal occupational injuries in developing countries is almost twice as high as in developed countries, indicating a potential relationship between the fatality rates and the development level. The human development index (HDI), based on life expectancy, knowledge level and purchasing power parity, endorsed by the United Nations Development Programme, is a widely accepted measure of the development level. This study investigates the relationship between the HDI and the fatality rates reported by the ILO. A 23-country data set is used to demonstrate the general trend of the relationship followed by country-specific analyses for Australia, Spain, Hungary and Turkey. The study conducted is limited to fatal occupational injuries in construction, where the accidents are notoriously high. The results demonstrate a statistically significant inverse relationship between the fatality rates and the HDI.