Search Results (34)

Roll-on/Roll-off passenger vessels transporting electric vehicles (Ro-Ro EVs) face unique fire hazards, challenging traditional fire risk management strategies. This study integrates fault tree analysis (FTA) with Fuzzy Bayesian Network (FBN) to assess the fire risks of Ro-Ro EVs across the entire hazard chain. Given limited historical accident data, five experts familiar with the Shanghai Baoshan–Chongming ferry route refine fault tree models to visualize key fire hazard chain mechanisms and estimate risk probabilities. The FBN incorporates fault tree hierarchical structures, EV and Ro-Ro vessel-related risk factors, and applies a nine-level fuzzy scoring system to assess these risks. The FTA-FBN model offers a comprehensive framework for evaluating emerging fire risks specific to Ro-Ro EVs. Findings indicate that the highest risk occurs during the ignition phase. Primary triggers include external heat sources, improper vehicle securing, and vehicle collisions, leading to thermal runaway in lithium batteries. Failures in extinguishing and detecting lithium battery fires exacerbate fire spread. Effective fire compartmentalization and flammable material management are essential to prevent uncontrolled fires. Recommendations for fire prevention and control include shipboard battery level monitoring, charging restrictions, explosion-proof electrical installations, enhanced ventilation, lithium battery fire suppression systems, and vehicle securing. Full article

Workers may be exposed to conditions that put their physical and mental integrity at risk, from workplace settings to climate characteristics. Heat stress is a harmful health condition caused by exceeding the human body’s tolerance limits, leading to illness and increasing the chance of work accidents. Heat stress indexes, such as the Humidex and the Heat Index (HI), are used to measure these impacts. These indexes are significant as they provide a quantitative measure of the heat stress experienced by workers, taking into account both environmental and individual factors. Objective: This study aims to compare multiple heat stress indexes, relating them to historical Brazilian occupational accident data. Methods: We selected eight indexes and applied multiple correspondence analysis to each one, a statistical method that generates graphs to visualize the association between variables in a database. Results: The analysis and comparison of the graphs indicated that seven of the eight indexes presented similar behavior. It was also possible to relate ranges of index values with specific characteristics of the accidents. Conclusions: The technique allowed us to analyze the relationship between climate and work accidents and showed that the choice of the heat stress index does not significantly alter the results for most indexes studied. Full article

The demand for the use of secondary batteries is increasing rapidly worldwide in order to solve global warming and achieve carbon neutrality. Major minerals used to produce cathode materials, which are key raw materials for secondary batteries, are treated as conflict minerals due to their limited reserves, and accordingly, research on the battery recycling industry is urgent for the sustainable secondary battery industry. There is a significant risk of accidents because there is a lack of prior research data on the battery recycling process and various chemicals are used in the entire recycling process. Therefore, for the safety management of related industries, it is necessary to clearly grasp the battery recycling process and to estimate the risk accordingly. In this study, the process was generalized using the information on the battery recycling process suggested in the preceding literature. And to estimate the relative risk of each battery recycling process, the RAC (Risk Assessment Code) matrix described in the US Department of Defense’s “MIL-STD-882E” was used. Severity was derived by using “NFPA 704”, and probability was derived by combining generalized event analysis for each process and the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) report. The results confirmed that the process using H₂SO₄ had the highest risk when extracting Li during the leaching process, and that dismantling and heat treatment had the lowest risk. Using the probability factor for each process calculated through the research, it is expected to be used in future battery recycling process research as basic data for quantitative risk assessment of the battery recycling process. Full article

In the North Atlantic and the Northern Ocean, from the second half of 2010 to 2014, satellite imagery data showed increased surface water temperatures (in the Icelandic Depression area in September–October 2010, it was 1.3 °C higher than in 2009). The peak of the annual sum of mean monthly ocean surface temperatures near the Icelandic Depression in 2010 (109.3 °C), as well as the negative values of the monthly averaged North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) indices, estimated in the second half of 2010 and until March 2011, can be explained by the appearance of an additional film of oil origin on the water surface, formed after an oil spill accident at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Insufficient evaporative cooling of surface waters near the Icelandic Depression related to the formation of an additive film due to the influence of pollution of the North Sea by oil can explain the earlier peak in the annual sum of mean monthly ocean surface temperatures near the Icelandic Depression in 2003 (107.2 °C). Although global warming is usually ascribed to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, ocean surface water pollution could increase the heat content of the ocean and explain the steady temperature stratification and desalination of these waters due to the melting of Greenland’s glaciers. Thus, when analyzing the concept of global warming, it is necessary to take into account the aspects of pollution of the ocean surface waters to assess the changes in their capacity to accumulate solar radiation, as well as the changes in the heat content of the ocean mixing zone (~200 m). Full article

Climate change poses health risks to Arkansas small farmers. Farmers face an increased risk of heat-related illnesses (e.g., heat exhaustion, cerebral vascular accidents, and cardiovascular issues) and work-related injuries, death, and mental health conditions due to climate change. This cross-sectional survey employed the health belief model (HBM) as its theoretical framework. This study aimed to assess the health status of small farmers, climate change beliefs, adaptive agricultural practices, and the perceived effects of climate change on health. Study data were collected using non-probability sampling methods from small farmers (n = 72) with a gross farm income of < USD 250,000. The study findings show that 93% of participants reported good–excellent health, 69% believe the climate is changing and getting warmer, 58.3% believe people are responsible for the changes in our climate, and 75% believe the changing climate impacts farmers. Among the HBM predictive variables, participants reported self-efficacy (50%), perceived susceptibility (48.6%), and perceived severity (43%). Only 16.7% of farmers reported believing they have all the information needed to prepare for climate-related health impacts. This study suggests small farmers have protective factors and adaptive capacity, including health status, income, and education levels, but believe they lack the information necessary to protect their health from climate change. Full article

Agriculture, alongside construction and mining, is one of the three most hazardous industries, and is characterized by numerous risk factors for occupational accidents. Unlike other industries, agriculture faces significant safety concerns related to the natural environment. Determining the causes of accidents is therefore imperative for accident prevention. However, the difficulty in investigating accidents owing to inadequate reporting and management systems among self-employed farmers hampers the determination of their causes. This study aims to determine the factors influencing agricultural accidents through a literature review. A systematic literature search was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. The initial search yielded 165 articles of which 34 papers were selected after removing those by applying the selection criteria. The selected papers were categorized into three domains: work accidents, machinery accidents, and farmer safety promotion. Accident causes were classified using the 4M technique: machine, media, man, and management. The results were visualized with a heat map. The main causes of accidents thus identified were insufficient operation/management, inappropriate work situation, and insufficient education/training. The findings of this study can serve as foundational data for developing measures to improve working environments not only in agriculture but also in other high-hazard industries. Full article

Poland is actively exploring the application of nuclear power as a substitute for its present reliance on fossil fuels for the generation of heat and electricity. This change reflects a calculated attempt to reduce carbon emissions, diversify the nation’s energy sources, and enhance the sustainability of its energy infrastructure. However, the implementation of nuclear technology faces many challenges, such as radiation exposure, the production of radioactive waste, the off-site effects of nuclear accidents, and high capital costs. Addressing such nuclear-safety-related issues is crucial for nuclear technology’s successful deployment. An extended analysis of the “coal-to-nuclear” process in terms of its safety has to be performed. Therefore, this review paper covers multidisciplinary studies related to the rollout of nuclear energy in Poland. The first stage of this study was the identification of the key areas of analysis, which included (i) formal requirements and recommendations imposed by international and national organizations on the process of designing and operating nuclear power systems; (ii) potential nuclear hazards for the personnel working at a nuclear reactor unit and the local population; (iii) the applied solutions of the security systems of a reactor itself, the steam turbine cycle, and the auxiliary infrastructure; and (iv) the management of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. This methodology, developed based on a review of the literature and international standards, was tested for the selected country—Poland. Full article

The highway construction industry carries substantial safety risks for workers, necessitating thorough accident analyses to implement effective preventive measures. Current research lacks comprehensive investigations into safety incidents, relying heavily on conventional statistical methods and overlooking valuable textual information in publicly available databases. This study leverages a state-of-the-art large language model (LLM), specifically OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model. The primary focus is to enhance text-based incident analysis that is sourced from OSHA’s Severe Injury Reports (SIR) database. By incorporating novel natural language processing (NLP) techniques, dimensionality reduction, clustering algorithms, and LLM prompting of incident narratives, the study aims to develop an approach to the analysis of major accident causes in highway construction. The resulting cluster analysis, coupled with LLM summarization and cause identification, reveals the major accident types, such as heat-related and struck-by injuries, as well as commonalities between incidents. This research showcases the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and LLM technology in data-driven analysis. By efficiently processing textual data and providing insightful analysis, the study fosters practical implications for safety professionals and the development of more effective accident prevention and intervention strategies within the industry. Full article

The construction industry has witnessed a surge in heat-related accidents alongside rising summertime temperatures, exposing workers to potential injuries. The absence of specific heat stress standards by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) underscores the urgent need for more comprehensive and interactive educational materials to prevent such incidents in construction projects. This study proposes the adoption of an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) application to offer construction workers realistic and effective training, mitigating heat-related injuries. During the training sessions, VR headsets were utilized to immerse workers in two lifelike scenarios: (1) Addressing self-care during heat exhaustion; (2) Assisting a coworker experiencing heat exhaustion. A case study evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed VR training for 82 construction workers from two companies. Company A had traditional training, while Company B used VR training. Both groups took pre- and post-assessment surveys with six questions. The pre-assessment found no significant knowledge difference between the groups. After training, VR showed a significant reduction in incorrect answers compared to traditional training. Statistical tests confirmed the superiority of VR training (p-value = 0.00152 < 0.05), suggesting its effectiveness in preventing heat-related injuries in construction compared to traditional training methods. Full article

Chemical safety accidents caused by the thermal runaway of materials occur frequently around the world, seriously hindering the sustainable development of the chemical industry. Therefore, studies related to the thermal safety of materials are very important for chemical production. In order to ensure the safety of methyl tris (methyl ethyl ketone oxime) silane (MOS), the thermal safety of its accident-prone by-product, methyl ethyl ketone oxime hydrochloride (MEKOH), was analyzed in the study. Temperature changes of MEKOH dissolved in 5%, 10% and 15% deionized water were measured with the flask method. Thermogravimetric (TG) analysis and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were applied to comprehensively analyze the thermal stability of MEKOH in different reaction states. The thermal decomposition products of MEKOH were detected with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results show that the temperature of MEKOH dissolved in deionized water at room temperature (28 °C) increases by about 5 °C, and finally stabilizes at 33 °C. MEKOH has good thermal safety during this process. When the temperature rises to 50 °C, MEKOH starts to decompose violently, and no longer exhibits significant weight loss at 145 °C. From 50 °C to 100 °C, MEKOH releases heat, ranging from 29.65 to 45.86 J/g, during thermal decomposition, generating a large amount of flammable substances. The thermal decomposition products were detected, including pyrrolidine, heptane, MEKO, and other substances, but no MEKOH was detected. Overall, the study provides a theoretical basis for preventing the thermal runaway of MEKOH. Full article

Fire can be one of the most destructive elements to cause devastation. Fire can completely or partly destroy any crucial and invaluable documents, such as banknotes, books, affidavits, etc., in a couple of minutes. Moreover, the documents can also be damaged by heat, smoke, soot, and water during an accident. The burnt documents become fragile, losing their identity, which may have some evidentiary value related to the incident. Therefore, there is a strong need for processing to procure, preserve, and decipher, i.e., to restore the texts written on them. Hence, the present research focuses on developing a new method using natural polysaccharides, i.e., starch, to preserve and decipher the contents of charred documents. The most suitable concentration of starch analog was found to be 6% microwaved at 80 °C for about 10 min. As soon as the charred documents were coated with 6% starch analog, the majority of the invisible texts became visible to the naked eye in a second. Moreover, the application of a synthesized analog of polysaccharide on fragile charred documents provided an appreciable increase in strength by almost 0.1 kg/cm² for the coated charred documents of each paper type compared to that of non-coated ones and made them stabilized. This research also involves the use of easy and advanced handwriting recognition techniques (HCR) using an easily accessible, free platform, G-lens, that successfully recognized the majority of texts deciphered using 6% starch analog and converted them from captured images to a readable and copyable text format. Furthermore, the document visualization under VSC also gave a promising result by enhancing and deciphering the non-visible and less visible texts under flood light and white spot light at 715 and 695 long passes. Hence, this study offers an environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and sustainable approach of using a natural polysaccharide instead of synthetic polymers for the preservation and decipherment of charred documents. Full article

Background: Prevention plays a key role in ensuring health and safety and is particularly important in scenarios when life is threatened. Adverse thermal conditions are experienced by billions of people daily, affecting the human capacity for thermoregulation and increasing the risks of life-threatening accidents, diseases, and fatalities. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a new, freely accessible method that will ultimately allow health, as well as exercise and labour organizations, to predict and potentially mitigate the physiological strain experienced by people who exercise or work in thermally stressful environmental conditions. Methods: First, we used concurrent technological advances and thermophysiological modelling to (i) develop a mobile phone application that predicts the physiological heat strain experienced by individuals conducting physical activity in adverse environmental conditions, and (ii) provide them with individualized heat mitigation strategies. Second, to examine the construct validity of the newly developed mobile phone application, core body temperature was recorded using gastrointestinal thermometry in 37 healthy soldiers during different activities. These data were used to examine the predictive capacity of our application in pre-classifying individuals with an increased risk of experiencing elevated physiological heat strain during work based on the guidelines (core body temperature ≥ 38 °C) of the World Health Organization. Results: The core body temperature predictions made by the mobile phone application were positively related (r = 0.57, p < 0.05) with the actual physiological measurements taken by our participants (mean absolute error: 0.28 °C). More importantly, our application correctly predicted 93% of occurrences of elevated physiological heat strain and 90% of those that were not (overall accuracy: 92%). Conclusions: Mobile phone applications integrating thermophysiological models can predict the physiological heat strain experienced by an individual, but it remains to be studied whether the suggested heat mitigation strategies can reduce or prevent adverse impacts. Full article

Natech accidents have an increasing relevance due to the growing number of such events and to their severe consequences. Climate change and global warming are intensifying the occurrence and the magnitude of climate-related natural events, further increasing the risk of cascading sequences triggered by natural disasters impacting industrial installations. The present study focuses on Natech triggered by heat waves. The features of this specific category of Natech events were investigated by past accident analysis, collecting an extended dataset of past events. The dataset analysis allowed the identification of the key factors that characterize these accident scenarios, such as the direct causes, the technological scenario that occurred, the substance categories, and the equipment items more frequently involved. The main direct cause of accidents resulted in an internal pressure increase, exceeding equipment design limits. Fire scenarios represent the most important category of technological scenarios that occurred. Besides equipment items handling liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, waste storage and processing systems also resulted frequently in accidents, due to the self-decomposition and self-ignition phenomena. The analysis of past accidents also allowed identifying some lessons learned, useful to identify specific actions aimed at preventing and/or mitigating the possible occurrence of these accident scenarios. Full article

Ice accumulation on brass surfaces can lead to heat transfer inefficiency, equipment degradation, and potential accidents. To address this issue, superhydrophobic surface technology is utilized. This work aims to develop superhydrophobic nanostructured brass surfaces using the combination of nanolaser ablation and the deposition of silica nanoparticles to achieve the anti-icing property. Four distinct types of brass surfaces namely, the bare surface (BS), the lasered surface (LS), the coated surface (CS), and the coated-lasered surface (CLS) were prepared. The anti-icing performances of the fabricated samples including the effects of the surface structure, the droplet size, and the surface temperature were investigated and evaluated. The results showed that the delayed icing time increased with the increases in the apparent contact angle, the droplet size, and the surface temperature. When the apparent contact angle increased, the contact area between the droplet and the cooling substrate reduced, leading to the longer delayed icing time. With the deposition of silica nanoparticles and nanolaser treatment, CLS achieved the greatest apparent contact angle of 164.5°, resulting in the longest delayed icing time under all experimental conditions. The longest delayed icing time on CLS recorded in this study was 2584 s, which was 575%, 356%, and 27% greater than those on BS, LS, and CS, respectively. The study also revealed that the surface structure played a more crucial role in achieving the anti-icing property when compared to the surface temperature or the droplet size. The shortest delayed icing time on CLS at the lowest surface temperature and at the smallest droplet size was longer than those on BS and LS at all conditions. The results were also discussed in relation to a heat transfer model. The findings of this research can serve as an avenue for advancing knowledge on heat transfer enhancement and energy efficiency. Full article

One of the most important environmental and safety concerns in nuclear fusion plants is the confinement of radioactive substances into the reactor buildings during both normal operations and accidental conditions. For this reason, hydrogen build-up and subsequent ignition must be avoided, since the pressure and energy generated may threaten the integrity of the confinement structures, causing the dispersion of radioactive and toxic products toward the public environment. Potentially dangerous sources of hydrogen are related to the exothermal oxidation reactions between steam and plasma-facing components or hot dust, which could occur during accidents such as the in-vessel loss of coolant or a wet bypass. The research of technical solutions to avoid the risk of a hydrogen explosion in large fusion power plants is still in progress. In the safety and environment work package of the EUROfusion consortium, activities are ongoing to study solutions to mitigate the hydrogen explosion risk. The main objective is to preclude the occurrence of flammable gas mixtures. One identified solution could deal with the installation of passive autocatalytic recombiners into the atmosphere of the vacuum vessel pressure suppression system tanks. A model to control the PARs recombination capacity as a function of thermal-hydraulic parameters of suppression tanks has been modeled in MELCOR. This paper aims to test the theoretical effectiveness of the PAR intervention during an in-vessel loss of coolant accident without the intervention of the decay heat removal system for the Water-Cooled LithiumLead concept of EU-DEMO. Full article