Health Risk Assessment for Sewer Workers using Bayesian Belief Networks
The sanitary sewerage connection rate becomes an
important indicator of advanced cities. Following the construction of
sanitary sewerages, the maintenance and management systems are
required for keeping pipelines and facilities functioning well. These
maintenance tasks often require sewer workers to enter the manholes
and the pipelines, which are confined spaces short of natural
ventilation and full of hazardous substances. Working in sewers could
be easily exposed to a risk of adverse health effects. This paper
proposes the use of Bayesian belief networks (BBN) as a higher level
of noncarcinogenic health risk assessment of sewer workers. On the
basis of the epidemiological studies, the actual hospital attendance
records and expert experiences, the BBN is capable of capturing the
probabilistic relationships between the hazardous substances in sewers
and their adverse health effects, and accordingly inferring the
morbidity and mortality of the adverse health effects. The provision of
the morbidity and mortality rates of the related diseases is more
informative and can alleviate the drawbacks of conventional methods.
[1] Lai CH, Lin CH, Yeh SH, Huang LJ, 2004. Air pollutant exposure and
risk assessment for sewer workers, Environmental Informatics Archives
2: 405-412.
[2] US EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency), 2001. National-Scale
Air Toxics Assessment for 1996: Draft for EPA Science Advisory Board
Review. Available at http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/sab/sabrev.html#A1
[3] Pearl J, 1988. Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems´╝ÜNetworks
of Plausible Inference, Morgan Kaufmann, California.
[4] Lin GX, 2005. Risk assessment for sewer workers in Kaohsiung city,
master's thesis, Fooyin University.
[5] Uusitalo L, 2007. Advantages and challenges of Bayesian networks in
environmental modeling. Ecological Modelling 203: 312-318.
[1] Lai CH, Lin CH, Yeh SH, Huang LJ, 2004. Air pollutant exposure and
risk assessment for sewer workers, Environmental Informatics Archives
2: 405-412.
[2] US EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency), 2001. National-Scale
Air Toxics Assessment for 1996: Draft for EPA Science Advisory Board
Review. Available at http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/sab/sabrev.html#A1
[3] Pearl J, 1988. Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems´╝ÜNetworks
of Plausible Inference, Morgan Kaufmann, California.
[4] Lin GX, 2005. Risk assessment for sewer workers in Kaohsiung city,
master's thesis, Fooyin University.
[5] Uusitalo L, 2007. Advantages and challenges of Bayesian networks in
environmental modeling. Ecological Modelling 203: 312-318.
@article{"International Journal of Medical, Medicine and Health Sciences:55690", author = "Kevin Fong-Rey Liu and Ken Yeh and Cheng-Wu Chen and Han-Hsi Liang", title = "Health Risk Assessment for Sewer Workers using Bayesian Belief Networks", abstract = "The sanitary sewerage connection rate becomes an
important indicator of advanced cities. Following the construction of
sanitary sewerages, the maintenance and management systems are
required for keeping pipelines and facilities functioning well. These
maintenance tasks often require sewer workers to enter the manholes
and the pipelines, which are confined spaces short of natural
ventilation and full of hazardous substances. Working in sewers could
be easily exposed to a risk of adverse health effects. This paper
proposes the use of Bayesian belief networks (BBN) as a higher level
of noncarcinogenic health risk assessment of sewer workers. On the
basis of the epidemiological studies, the actual hospital attendance
records and expert experiences, the BBN is capable of capturing the
probabilistic relationships between the hazardous substances in sewers
and their adverse health effects, and accordingly inferring the
morbidity and mortality of the adverse health effects. The provision of
the morbidity and mortality rates of the related diseases is more
informative and can alleviate the drawbacks of conventional methods.", keywords = "Bayesian belief networks, sanitary sewerage, healthrisk assessment, hazard quotient, target organ-specific hazard index.", volume = "5", number = "9", pages = "422-5", }