EFFECTIVENESS OF BIOHAZARD EDUCATION IN BIOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY

• Main Authors: Shu-Hui Wang, 王淑慧
• Other Authors: Yue-Liang Guo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/13836285046929459917

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 環境醫學研究所 === 91 === Biotechnology is one of the rapidly developing industries in the 21st century. The workers of biotechnology industry may be exposed to biohazardous environment. The objective of this investigation is to determine the effectiveness of education and training on the workers’ recognition of biological safety and health. Our candidates industries for this study are the registered biotechnology industries in Industrial Development Bureau of Ministry of Economic Affairs. The industries were stratified into 3 groups according to the number of employees, namely, above 100, 30 to 99, and below 30. Phone interview using structured questionnaire was conducted to evaluate knowledge, attitude and practice on biological safety and health. After initial evaluation, representatives of these companies were invited to receive education and training. The training program was composed of such documents from Council of Agriculture and National Science Council. Those who received biological safety and health training course were experiment group. Those who did not receive training were comparison group. After 3 months of training, a similar questionnaire was used to re-evaluate the companies. The questionnaire contained 15 questions, which were scored from 0 to 100 totally. In addition, industrial hygiene inspection was also conducted as a comparison with questionnaire. Total of 31 companies with biological laboratory were selected as our study subjects. The industrial hygienists of 10 companies received the training program. Another 10 companies with similar size of employees were selected as comparison. The average score was 56.5 (SE of 6.1) in trained group and 44.8 (SE of 6.6) in comparison group before giving training. There is no statistical difference (p=0.34) between these two groups. Three months after training, the scores were 80.2 (SE of 2.2) and 60.0 (SE of 3.5), in trained and comparison groups, respectively. There was significant improvement in biohazard recognition(p=0.0009) and management(p=0.02) for trained groups. Therefore the untrained groups had improvement on biological safety and health management(p=0.04) but not in biohazard recognition. While comparing the scores between expert inspection and self-evaluation, these 2 scores were highly correlated (R2=0.583, p=0.01). However, the results of expert inspection were also significantly lower than self-evaluated (p=0.007). It is concluded that biological safety and health training program is useful for improving safety and health knowledge, attitude, and practice in biotechnology industry. Although self-evaluation gives information on worker’s safety and health practice, its effect may be over-estimated. Therefore, regular inspection by experts is a better way to improve biological safety and health management.