Editorial


Available Online at http://nepjol.info/index.php/IJOSH  

 

 

International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health, Vol. 2 No. 1  (2012) 1  

Editorial 

Dr. Somnath Gangopadhyay 

Consultant Editor  

International Journal on Occupational Safety and Health (IJOSH) 

 The present issue of IJOSH contains two review and 

five original articles in different dimensions of Occupational 

Health. These are starting from mental health and passing 

through green hazards, attitudes to occupational health and safe-

ty of vocational tutors, estimation of accidents in construction 

industry, health status of child laborers and ending to environ-

mental safety during stone crushing in Abbottabad. 

 Within the 2nd issue of the journal it attracts the global research-

ers as a responsible media to contribute their valuable observa-

tions.  

The review article of Halder and Mahato depicts the mental 

health in the view of continuous occupational stress at work 

place. Less physical work intensive workplaces also may act as 

stressors to the occupants. Dorothea Lynde Dix ‘s attempt  to 

protect human being to become mentally ill has no use in these 

days, where work and time act as a conjugated factor for the 

development of such illness.  Halder and Mahato suggest moni-

toring regularly the mental condition of the workers and stressing 

level at work place for their protection against the development of 

mental illness. 

Another review from Jaita Mondal portrays the mechanical & 

physical hazards at domestic kitchen. Domestic kitchen are hav-

ing potential risk factors for accidents. Jaita Mondal prescribe the 

domestic kitchen should be follow the ergonomics principal and 

consider the anthropometric variation to avoid such accidents.  

Sonika Achalli, Shishir Ram Shetty and Subhas G Babu explore 

in their article the most neglected occupational health hazard: the 

green tobacco sickness.  

As it is reported by the National Institute of Occupational Health, 

Ahmedabad that Indian tobacco harvesters are highly affected 

with green tobacco sickness or GTS. A global awareness cam-

paign on the green tobacco sickness is urgently required. 

 Stavroula  Bibila presents an original article on the knowledge of 

and attitudes to occupational health & safety among tutors of a 

vocational training institute in Greece. Her objective is to identify 

the significant predictors of OHS knowledge. She has designat-

ed that “hours of OHS training” is the primary and the only pre-

dictor of OHS knowledge. Her study is based on the analysis of 

responses in 9 item knowledge scale and 9 item attitude scale.   

In India, a similar “knowledge and attitude” study [1] was done 

among garment workers. A wide gap was observed between 

their knowledge level and attitude towards safety. More OHS 

training may be improved the safety attitude of workers. 

Article of Gholamhossein Halvani et al on the estimation of acci-

dents in construction industry use a specific model for the analy-

sis of accidents. 

The General Conference of the International Labour Organiza-

tion on 1 June 1999 considered the need for the prohibition and 

elimination of child labour.  But even now in most of the develop-

ing countries, a large number of children are directly involved in 

different hazardous occupations. Child labour health should be 

the prime concerned of these countries. Joshi et al compares the 

health status of Nepalese child labourers with same aged school 

going children of Nepal.  On the basis of their result, they come 

in conclusion to give priority in improvement of child labour 

health. 

In the last article of this issue, Brad Muise suggests that 

YouTube may currently be an inadequate source of information 

on confined space safety. This article conveys that, the Safety 

professionals should verify YouTube video content against trust-

ed agencies such as OSHA before using them as a resource for 

confined space information. 

1. Parimalam P, Kamalamma N, Ganguli AK: Knowledge, atti-
tude and practices related to occupational health problems 
among garment workers in Tamil Nadu, India. J Occup Health. 
2007, 49(6):528-34.