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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.

The purpose of this study is to explore the determinants of needle stick injuries (NSIs) suffering in terms of occupational health and safety (OHS) coverage critically for health-care workers’ rights in Pakistan.

This is a qualitative study involving the designing of a questionnaire followed by the World Health Organization’s NSI prevention assessment tool and nationally published reports covering health-care workers’ OHS rights protection. A total of 17 public and private hospitals were surveyed with a two-stage sampling method. Descriptive and inferential statistics (one-way analysis of variance with multiple comparison tests) were applied and significant results were discussed (p = 0.05 & p = 0.01). The results were discussed critically in the context of the OHS rights of health-care workers.

Analysis revealed the following significant relationships: job type and safety behavior; age group of health-care workers and safety management; injection usage per day and safety behavior; past year’s needle sticks injuries cases with safety behavior and occupational exposure; work shift and work experience with safety knowledge, safety awareness and work experience with safety management. It was also found there is no specific OHS law in the country for health-care workers.

This study is limited in terms of sampling size and quantification of NSI burden among health-care workers.

Improved OHS management practices among health-care workers can control NSIs that ultimately ensure their workplace OHS rights. Health-care workers need OHS coverage in terms of awareness about potential workplace hazards and job training accordingly. Findings from extensive studies of a similar kind can give useful policy directions for workplace health management in health-care setup at the national level.

This study highlights the importance of OHS coverage for health-care workers in hospitals. It reports different determinants of NSIs suffering causing health-care worker’s rights violations at the workplace in Pakistan.

The shipbreaking sector in Bangladesh has spurred extensive academic and policy debates on relations between shipbreaking industries, environmental degradation and the health security of their workers. As shipbreaking is an economically significant industry in Bangladesh, it needs to implement both domestic and global mechanisms for environmental conservation and the protection of the labourers’ health from environmental risks. The purpose of this paper is to primarily explore the environmental and health security issues in shipbreaking activities in Bangladesh. It also identifies the challenges in implementing the rules and regulations for protecting the health of the workers at shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh and preserving the marine environment.

This is a qualitative paper based on secondary materials, including journal articles, books and national and international reports. It critically reviews the existing literature, rules, regulations and policing on shipbreaking with a particular focus on the environment and health security of the workers.

This paper finds that the implementation of the rules and regulations in shipbreaking in Bangladesh is complicated because of weak implementation mechanisms, political and economic interests of the yard owners, lack of coordination among different agencies, lack of adequate training and awareness among the workers and workers’ poor economic condition, which contribute to the degradation of marine and local environments and trigger health hazards among the workers. Therefore, degrading the environment and undermining occupational health and safety regulations have become regular; thus, accidental death and injury to the workers are common in this sector.

This paper is an important study on the issues of workers' health and safety and environmental hazards in the shipyard. It reports how the health security of the workers in shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh is vulnerable, and environmental rules are challenged. Finally, this paper frames some policy implications to safeguard the workers’ health rights and the marine environment.

The purpose of this study was to research studies in the literature regarding the role of the occupational therapist within penitentiary facilities.

The study design is a systematic review using five different databases.

Findings can therefore ascertain the potential role of occupational therapists in penitentiary institutions because they can contribute to the rehabilitation of prisoners both inside and outside prisons with a view to their reintegration into society.

It is necessary for clinical practice, and especially to increase the health of people within prisons, to update the occupational therapist interventions in the literature that are effective within prisons.

According to this study, the intervention of occupational therapists in the prison setting reduces recidivism and contributes to social and work reintegration. This has positive effects in terms of costs related to incarceration.

Findings can therefore ascertain the potential role of occupational therapists in penitentiary institutions because they can contribute to the rehabilitation of prisoners both inside and outside prisons with a view to their reintegration into society.

Knowledge regarding the importance of the psychosocial work environment for health and well-being in the workplace is extensive. However, more knowledge is needed about how the managers’ organizational conditions are related to what occupational health and safety management (OHSM) is actually conducted and how this relates to the work-related health of employees. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate if managers’ organizational conditions are associated with the conducted OHSM, and if the conducted OHSM is associated with the psychosocial work environment and well-being of the employees.

An electronic questionnaire was sent to managers and their employees working in 10 different organizations in Sweden, resulting in 1,097 valid responses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the results.

The SEM analysis showed that managers’ conditions were related to employee well-being via OHSM and psychosocial work environment (job demands and job resources).

This study contributes to the existing literature in the field of OHSM by placing explicit focus on the role of organizational conditions for conducting OHSM. By studying not only the link between work environment and health, but also focus on the underlying organizational structures for OHSM, provides additional possibilities for prevention of the increasing work-related illness. As such, this paper contributes to a more holistic perspective in the field of OHSM.

Mental health problems are a grave concern in construction. Although the distinction between high job demands and low job resources, as reflected in the Job Demands-Resources (JD–R) model, has been used to examine the extent to which psychosocial hazards influence mental health for construction practitioners, limited research has reflected on the nature of these psychosocial hazards by exploring experiences of site-based construction practitioners.

This study adopted a phenomenological approach to examine people’ experiences and thoughts of the complex phenomena of psychosocial hazards and mental health in construction. In total, 33 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with site-based construction practitioners in Australia to unveil construction-focused psychosocial hazards and their effects on mental health. The data were analysed via content analysis, employing an interpretation-focused coding strategy to code text and an individual-based sorting strategy to cluster codes.

Eighteen psychosocial hazards were identified based on the JD–R model. Six of these represented a new contribution, describing salient characteristics inherent to the construction context (i.e. safety concerns, exposure to traumatic events, job insecurity, task interdependency, client demand and contract pressure). Of particular importance, a number of interrelationships among psychosocial hazards emerged.

The significance of this qualitative research lies in elucidating psychosocial hazards and their complex interrelatedness in the context of the mental health of construction practitioners, enriching the understanding of this central health and safety issue in the high-risk setting of construction work. The findings contribute to addressing mental health issues in the Australian construction industry by identifying higher order control measures, thereby creating a mentally healthy workplace.

Gender and geographical imbalance in production and impact levels is a pressing issue in global knowledge production. Within Health Sciences, while some studies found stark gender and geographical biases and inequalities, others found little empirical evidence of this marginalization. The purpose of the study is to clear the ambiguity concerning the topic.

Based on a comprehensive and systematic analysis of Health Sciences research data downloaded from the Scival (Scopus/Scimago) database from 2017 to 2020 (n = 7,990), this study first compares gender representation in research productivity, as well as differences in terms of citation per document, citations per document view and view per document scores according to geographical location. Additionally, the study clarifies whether there is a geographic bias in productivity and impact measures (i.e. citation per document, citations per document view and view per document) moderated by gender.

Results indicate that gender inequalities in productivity are systematic at the overall disciplinary, as well as the subfield levels. Findings also suggest statistically significant geographical differences in citation per document, citations per document view, and view per document scores, and interaction effect of gender over the relation between geography and (1) the number of citations per view and (2) the number of views per document.

This study contributes to scientometric studies in health sciences by providing insightful findings about the geographical and gender bias in productivity and impact across world regions.

The construction industry has been recording a high number of accidents without any sign of abating, the majority of which have been linked to poor health and safety practices. To reduce this menace, this study aims to evaluate the factors affecting health and safety practices on construction sites to improve health and safety practices.

First, this study reviewed previous studies to derive the factors affecting health and safety practices on construction sites, and based on the literature review, the 50 factors identified were used in developing the questionnaire that was administered to construction professionals. The returned questionnaire was then analysed using fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE).

According to the FSE results, inadequate safety planning has the highest critical value, followed by management failure, inadequate safety promotion, safety ignorance, poor supervision and enforcement, a casual attitude towards safety and insufficient experience. The analysis showed that the overall criticality of the factors to the Malaysian construction industry is high, suggesting that if addressed, the health and safety practices of the industry will be improved.

The study provides a holistic approach to the factors affecting health and safety practices in the construction industry using a method that has not been used by previous researchers. The findings will furnish decision makers in the construction industry with practical approaches to adapt and reinforce in the industry to improve health and safety practices.

Over 2.7 million workers are employed in the UK construction industry and with the fragmented nature of the construction sector; cases of poor mental health of workers are on the increase. This upsurge in the number of workers experiencing poor mental health could directly impact construction safety with significant financial adverse consequences on employers and the UK economy. Studies have identified lapses within the construction sector emphasising the lack of transparency regarding reporting of mental health and well-being of construction workers due to the inadequate engagement from employers and the lack of genuine leadership commitment to tackle mental health.

This study adopted a non-probability purposive sampling strategy, using a self-selected sample. A self-administered questionnaire benchmarked against the mental health core and enhanced standards tools by the “Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers” served as the basis for the methodology. A total of 106 industry managers from highways, construction, maritime, utilities, home building, rail and haulage/fleet were involved in this study.

The findings indicate that the industry is making good strides towards addressing mental health issues; poor mental health have significant financial burdens on businesses and the economy; some contractors have mental health initiatives and programmes in place; there is inconsistency of support available to employees; some contractors now integrate leadership training; the level of engagement vary based on the strategy and action plan adopted by organisations; different mechanisms are adopted for monitoring mental health issues, and there are cross-industry initiatives.

A limitation of this study is the number of participants which is not representative of the entire UK construction workforce. Therefore, the findings from this study as much as it presents some understanding of employee mental health and well-being cannot be overtly generalised across multiple industries, different geographic regions or contexts.

Employers should have a clear representation of the mental health of their employees to help them understand what affects worker’s mental well-being and how they can support them. Disregarding the multifaceted causes of mental ill-health due to the perceived financial implications could be more devastating for the industry.

Current research on mental health in the construction industry is fragmented, making it difficult to obtain a complete picture of young construction workers’ mental health conditions. This situation adversely affects research progress, mental health-care planning and resource allocation. To address this challenge, the purpose of this paper was to identify the themes of mental health conditions among young construction workers and their prevalence by geographical location.

The scoping review was conducted using meta-aggregation, guided by the CoCoPop (condition [mental health], context [construction industry] and population [construction workers 35 years old and younger]) and PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews) frameworks.

A total of 327 studies were retrieved, and 14 studies published between 1993 and 2022 met the inclusion criteria. The authors identified 13 mental health conditions and categorized them under nine themes. Mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance-related disorders constituted the most researched themes. Studies predominantly focused on young male workers in the Global North. The prevalence estimates reported in most of the studies were above the respective country’s prevalence.

This review extends previous studies by focusing specifically on the themes of mental health conditions and giving attention to young construction workers whose health needs remain a global priority. The study emphasizes the need to give research attention to lesser-studied aspects of mental health, such as positive mental health. The need to focus on female construction workers and on homogenous sub-groups of young workers is also emphasized. The findings can guide future systematic reviews on the identified thematic areas and help to plan the development of interventions.