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To introduce a research carried out in a real world for implementing a dust control system (DCS) for controlling the indoor air quality (IAP) on the production floor of one of the major electronics company in Malaysia.

The paper is arranged as follows, a brief description of the significant of DCS in electronic industry and brief introduction to the electronic company as a case study company for introducing the DCS. The discussion on the characteristics management and planning tools (MPTs) that have been adopted as the analysing tools for assisting in the decision‐making process in identifying the problems and improvement strategies. It follows by the detail analysis phase regarding the implementation process that it as backbone for introducing the DCS. Finally a discussion about the result obtained from the MPT analysis on the techniques for identifying the root causes of the dust pollution problem as well as the best improvement strategies that can be adopted by the case study company.

Three analysis techniques from MPT have been used; there are relation diagram, tree diagram and prioritization matrices analyses. These techniques are very powerful for analysing the specific problem using verbal data. The outputs (results) from these techniques have been used as the solutions to the dust pollution problem. As a result, the implementations of DCS successfully reduce the dust level and stabilise the dust distribution on the production floor.

This paper offer a systematic way in identifying and controlling the IAP in industry.

This paper introduces very useful methods in decision making for identifying the solutions for environmental problem and implementation of DCS in a real world environment.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the control cubes for dust control in health-care facilities. Research shows that more than 80% of pathogenic agents in hospitals are spread into the air, where they either remain airborne or deposit on the surface. At the same time, renovation and repair activities, including regular maintenance, are a necessity in active health-care facilities and a multitude of studies have documented their impact on indoor air quality. The dust that is generated by construction activities may potentially carry pathogenic agents, varying from coarse particles (≤10 µm, PM10) to fine particles (≤2.5 µm, PM2.5), including airborne bacteria, and fungal spores linked to high patient mortality in immune-compromised patients.

This study measures the impact and effectiveness of one such preventative measure, namely, the control cube (CC), on air quality during renovation and repair. CC is a temporary structure, typically made from stainless steel, around the local repair zone to minimize the spread of dust and potential microorganisms. The current paper presents a comparative analysis to identify the effectiveness of a CC equipped with the high-efficiency particulate filtration (HEPA) filter in a hospital setting by simulating construction renovation and repair work.

A baseline was established to measure the effectiveness of CCs and the impact of negative pressure on the indoor air quality in a hospital during simulated renovation work. Results showed that CCs are very effective in minimizing the spread of dust due to construction activities in the hospital. However, it is imperative to ensure that the air inside the CC is cleaned via filtration.

CCs are very effective, and this paper investigates the best approach for facility managers to implement this strategy.

Investigates the characterization of cement dust collected by electrostatic precipitators and fabric filters to study its ability to be used as a concrete material. The study includes 26 cement dust samples collected from different points on dry process lines in four of the major cement plants in the United Arab Emirates. The collected samples were subjected to detailed physical tests and chemical analyses. Results obtained were compared with the British Standard Specifications set for ordinary Portland cement. Finds that eight samples show comparable physical properties and chemical as well as mineral composition.

The occupational health risk associated with the production of prefabricated concrete components is often overlooked. This paper will use a damage assessment and cyclic mitigation (DACM) model to provide individualized exposure risk assessment and corresponding mitigation management measures for workers who are being exposed.

The DACM model is proposed based on the concept of life cycle assessment (LCA). The model uses Monte-Carlo simulation for uncertainty risk assessment, followed by quantitative damage assessment using disability-adjusted life year (DALY). Lastly, sensitivity analysis is used to identify the parameters with the greatest impact on health risks.

The results show that the dust concentration is centered around the mean, and the fitting results are close to normal distribution, so the mean value can be used to carry out the calculation of risk. However, calculations using the DACM model revealed that there are still some work areas at risk. DALY damage is most severe in concrete production area. Meanwhile, the inhalation rate (IR), exposure duration (ED), exposure frequency (EF) and average exposure time (AT) showed greater impacts based on the sensitivity analysis.

Based on the comparison, the DACM model can determine that the potential occupational health risk of prefabricated concrete component (PC) factory and the risk is less than that of on-site construction. It synthesizes field research and simulation to form the entire assessment process into a case-base system with the depth of the cycle, which allows the model to be continuously adjusted to reduce the occupational health damage caused by production pollution exposure.

Automated dust monitoring in workplaces helps provide timely alerts to over-exposed workers and effective mitigation measures for proactive dust control. However, the cluttered nature of construction sites poses a practical challenge to obtain enough high-quality images in the real world. The study aims to establish a framework that overcomes the challenges of lacking sufficient imagery data (“data-hungry problem”) for training computer vision algorithms to monitor construction dust.

This study develops a synthetic image generation method that incorporates virtual environments of construction dust for producing training samples. Three state-of-the-art object detection algorithms, including Faster-RCNN, you only look once (YOLO) and single shot detection (SSD), are trained using solely synthetic images. Finally, this research provides a comparative analysis of object detection algorithms for real-world dust monitoring regarding the accuracy and computational efficiency.

This study creates a construction dust emission (CDE) dataset consisting of 3,860 synthetic dust images as the training dataset and 1,015 real-world images as the testing dataset. The YOLO-v3 model achieves the best performance with a 0.93 F1 score and 31.44 fps among all three object detection models. The experimental results indicate that training dust detection algorithms with only synthetic images can achieve acceptable performance on real-world images.

This study provides insights into two questions: (1) how synthetic images could help train dust detection models to overcome data-hungry problems and (2) how well state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms can detect nonrigid construction dust.

The purpose of this research is to address the existing gap in the study of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) by focusing on its impact on human health throughout the entire life cycle. And this research provides a comprehensive assessment model that incorporates the release of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter during the whole life cycle of C&DW, thereby contributing to a more holistic understanding of its impact on human health.

The research was conducted in two stages. Firstly, the quantitative model framework of pollutants emitted by C&DW was established. Three types of pollutants were considered, namely nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and inhalable particulate matter (PM10). Second, disability-adjusted life year (DALY) and willingness to pay (WTP) assessments were used to provide a monetary quantified health impact for pollutants released by C&DW.

The results show that the WTP value of PM10 is the highest among all pollutants and 8.68E+07 dollars/a, while the WTP value in the disposal stage accounts for the largest proportion compared to the generation and transportation stage. These findings emphasize the importance of PM10 and C&DW treatment stage for pollutant treatment.

The results of this study are of great significance for the management department to optimize the construction management scheme to reduce the total amount of pollutants produced by C&DW and its harm to human health. Meanwhile, this study fills the gap in existing research on the impact assessment of C&DW on human health throughout the whole life cycle, and provides reference and basis for future research and policy formulation.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

A RECENT ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ television episode portrayed a Time and Motion consultant in a very unfavourable light. The script writers did not attempt to explain his work, being too intent on creating credible circumstances for an attempted murder. All they needed was to build up a situation which made the workers' hostility to his activities obvious. It is to be hoped that homicide is not now an added occupational risk of consultants or Work Study men!

Britain's environmental overlord Peter Walker—in an exclusive interview with Richard Brooks—insists that pressure groups do not influence him greatly. In this article, following on from last month's feature on the way such American‐style groups are developing here, Walker and industrialists defend the company role.

IT was in September that we asked “What do Bullocks Produce?”. Well, now we know; and a right mess of controversy is the result. Or is it a result or, rather, a cause the result of which may well sound the virtual end of British business as we have known it and it has been built up over the years? It could also sound the death‐knell of the Mother of Parliaments; for power is being given, irrevocably, to the Unions.