The perceived compatibility of safety and production expectations in hazardous occupations

INTRODUCTION: Safety hazards are unavoidable in many work environments. Employees must be both productive and safe, however, conflicting safety and production demands can negatively affect safety, production, or both. The employee's perception of the compatibility of management's safety and production expectations is a possible predictor of such consequences. This paper defines "safety-production compatibility" and describes how measures of safety-production compatibility, as well as safety pressure and production pressure, were developed. METHOD: We used LISREL structural equation modeling to test the influences of safety-production compatibility, safety pressure, and production pressure on safe work behavior and interference with performing other work tasks. The 239 study participants were workers employed in diverse but hazardous occupations. RESULTS: Pressure to work safely was positively associated with safe work behavior. The perceived compatibility of safety and production demands positively influenced safe work behavior and reduced the interference of safety hazards performing other tasks. Safety-production compatibility was also found to mediate the relationship between trust in management and safe work behavior. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this field study suggest increased compatibility, and thus less conflict, between safety and production demands influences safe work behavior and the interference of safety hazards with performing other work tasks. More broadly, the worker's reaction to multiple work demands is a safety and performance influence. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Safety management efforts that focus only on the hazards fail to eliminate many accidents because accidents arise from many factors including technology, safety climate, social influences, production, and safety demands. This study suggests that workers differ in their perception of the compatibility of safety and production demands. These differences will show up in safe work behavior, influencing the effectiveness of safety management efforts and the trust workers have in management's concern for safety.     

高效液相色谱法测定矿区塌陷区水体中多环芳烃

高效液相色谱法是目前多环芳烃(PAHs)测定最常用技术之一。针对EPA规定的16种优先控制PAHs污染物,采用高效液相色谱法进行矿区塌陷区水体样品的测试。通过紫外-荧光串联使用,紫外检测器变波扫描,荧光检测器波长切换,合理设定流动相梯度洗脱程序等手段优化分析条件,使16个组分在40min内获得良好的分离效果。并分别选取在紫外和荧光检测条件下各组分的最大响应进行定量,使各组分均具有更低的检出限。本方法精密度为0.98%～10.4%,加标回收率达72.4%～112%,可作为各种环境样品中PAHs分析检测的参考。     

Modelling of heating furnace fire scenarios using fault tree analysis,a bayesian network,and a thermal transfer method for system reliability analysis

Energy production for oil companies requires high-performance equipment. However, after a certain period of use, this equipment could be damaged, causing numerous problems and defects, impeding production, and leading to incidents that may cause material and human losses. Therefore, it is necessary to master the performance parameters of each equipment, which are key indicators of its functionality and can indicate the possibility of reusing it after inspection and diagnosis. However, it is worth noting that the studied system is a vertical cylindrical furnace in Algeria's refinery. This paper describes a new hybrid approach, a methodology that evaluates system reliability by combining two studies. The first is based on the surety of the system's functioning through an analysis with a fault tree to identify the risks, followed by a quantitative analysis using a Bayesian method. The second study follows the thermal calculation of the equipment's performance parameters, namely: the thermal efficiency (η), heat transfer coefficient (h), and heat absorbed quantity (Q), using heat balance equations to quantify the heat absorbed quantity and identify the fluid flow regime inside the tube. The calculation considers three cases: The design case, the failure case, and the after renovation case. The originality of this work appears when the collected findings from the second study are fed into the first study's Bayesian Network (BN) to analyse the system's reliability using the calculated parameters. Then, BN is used to calculate the Probabilistic Importance Factors (PIFs) in order to identify the most impactful system components. Finally, a prediction analysis was conducted. The latter reveals that one of the furnace's major faults is the fumes accumulation inside the combustion chamber. Corrosion, overheating, coke formation inside the tubes, dumper deformation, and burner tip clogging all contribute to this fault.     

Community Structure and Quality After 10 Years in Two Central Ohio Mitigation Bank Wetlands

We evaluate two 10-year-old mitigation bank wetlands in central Ohio, one created and one with restored and enhanced components, by analysis of vegetation characteristics and by comparison of the year-10 vegetation and macroinvertebrate communities with reference wetlands. To assess different measures of wetland development, we compare the prevalence of native hydrophytes with an index of floristic quality and we evaluate the predictability of these parameters in year 10, given 5 years of data. Results show that the mitigation wetlands in this study meet vegetation performance criteria of native hydrophyte establishment by year 5 and maintain these characteristics through year 10. Species richness and floristic quality, as well as vegetative similarity with reference wetlands, differ among mitigation wetlands in year 1 and also in their rate of change during the first 10 years. The prevalence of native hydrophytes is reasonably predictable by year 10, but 5 years of monitoring is not sufficient to predict future trends of floristic quality in either the created or restored wetland. By year 10, macroinvertebrate taxa richness does not statistically differ among these wetlands, but mitigation wetlands differ from reference sites by tolerance index and by trophic guild dominance. The created wetland herbivore biomass is significantly smaller than its reference, whereas detritivore biomass is significantly greater in the created wetland and smaller in the restored wetland as compared with respective reference wetlands. These analyses illustrate differences in measures of wetland performance and contrast the monitoring duration necessary for legal compliance with the duration required for development of more complex indicators of ecosystem integrity.     

Economic and financial aspects of mine closure

Today, mine reclamation is a key component to a successful mine plan. Most of the industrialized nations have recognized the need to make mining activities relatively environmentally friendly, if they want to continue to benefit from the economic gains from mineral resource development. Countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa are leaders in the field and have implemented relatively sophisticated legislation to ensure environmentally correct mine closure. These countries rely on a combination of strict control strategies and economic penalties to ensure compliance. Yet, from the firm's perspective, reclamation activities are counterproductive as they cut into profits. In order to attract economic development and earn much needed economic capital, most of the rest of the world, particularly the developing countries, lack effective mine closure legislation. The traditional command and control type of legislation that is sometimes used is either vague and therefore avoided, or not enforced appropriately, resulting in an undesirable level of environmental degradation. With the use of case studies from Brazil, this article shows that direct controls are effective in some instances and not in others. It proposes that economic and financial tools may be more effective than the traditional direct controls in getting firms to comply with environmental standards, particularly in developing countries where environmental compliance is more difficult to achieve. It explains the use of performance bonding as one type of economic incentive that has proven to be an effective environmental policy in mine planning and closure. The authors additionally push beyond the typical style of performance bonds to introduce a flexible bonding and insurance system that allows governments to maintain strict environmental standards but limits firms financial exposure during the mining process. Such a system learns from the successes of the industrialized countries that use performance bonding and is sensitive to the needs of developing nations to attract investment yet maintain environmental integrity.     

The potential effect of differential ambient and deployment chamber temperatures on PRC derived sampling rates with polyurethane foam (PUF) passive air samplers

Performance reference compound (PRC) derived sampling rates were determined for polyurethane foam (PUF) passive air samplers in both sub-tropical and temperate locations across Australia. These estimates were on average a factor of 2.7 times higher in summer than winter. The known effects of wind speed and temperature on mass transfer coefficients could not account for this observation. Sampling rates are often derived using ambient temperatures, not the actual temperatures within deployment chambers. If deployment chamber temperatures are in fact higher than ambient temperatures, estimated sampler-air partition coefficients would be greater than actual partition coefficients resulting in an overestimation of PRC derived sampling rates. Sampling rates determined under measured ambient temperatures and estimated deployment chamber temperatures in summer ranged from 7.1 to 10 m³ day⁻¹ and 2.2-6.8 m³ day⁻¹ respectively. These results suggest that potential differences between ambient and deployment chamber temperatures should be considered when deriving PRC-based sampling rates.     

蜂窝电话用锂离子电池的环境试验

国家标准GB/T18287-2000《蜂窝电话用锂离子电池总规范》中明确规定了锂离子电池的20℃常温,高温,恒定湿热性能,震动,碰撞,自由跌落等环境试验的具体方法及环境试验后的放电性能测试方法。     

危险废物焚烧处置设施性能测试技术研究

危险废物集中焚烧处置是我国危险废物处置的最主要和最直接的方式之一。性能测试是检验危险废物焚烧处置设施能否达到正式运行要求的第一步,是保障焚烧处置设施安全稳定运行的必要手段,是颁发危险废物经营许可证的技术支撑。本文从标准废物选择及配置、性能测试指标体系建立、性能测试条件确定、性能测试监测技术研究、性能测试报告编制等方面开展适合我国国情的性能测试技术研究。     

超高效液相色谱三重四极杆质谱联用法测定水中的苯胺及联苯胺

将含有苯胺及联苯胺的水样过滤后加入乙腈(水样中乙腈比例为20%)直接进样,使用超高效液相色谱三重四极杆质谱联用法测定。通过选择离子反应监测,可实现定性和外标法定量分析。该法测定生活饮用水及其水源水中苯胺和联苯胺的最低检测浓度分别为2和0.2ng/mL,对实际样品的加标回收率为苯胺:112%～115%,联苯胺:84.5%～86.5%,该方法绿色环保、简单、具有较高的灵敏度和较低的检出限。     

Evidence-Based Knowledge Versus Negotiated Indicators for Assessment of Ecological Sustainability: The Swedish Forest Stewardship Council Standard as a Case Study

Assessing ecological sustainability involves monitoring of indicators and comparison of their states with performance targets that are deemed sustainable. First, a normative model was developed centered on evidence-based knowledge about (a) forest composition, structure, and function at multiple scales, and (b) performance targets derived by quantifying the habitat amount in naturally dynamic forests, and as required for presence of populations of specialized focal species. Second, we compared the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification standards’ ecological indicators from 1998 and 2010 in Sweden to the normative model using a Specific, Measurable, Accurate, Realistic, and Timebound (SMART) indicator approach. Indicator variables and targets for riparian and aquatic ecosystems were clearly under-represented compared to terrestrial ones. FSC’s ecological indicators expanded over time from composition and structure towards function, and from finer to coarser spatial scales. However, SMART indicators were few. Moreover, they poorly reflected quantitative evidence-based knowledge, a consequence of the fact that forest certification mirrors the outcome of a complex social negotiation process.