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PubMed2001

Traumatic stress and ways of coping of community residents exposed to a train disaster.

OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to examine the degree of traumatic stress and the coping strategies employed by community residents who lived on both sides of a rail track where a train collision occurred in 1996 in Stafford, UK. The hypothesis was that there would be a high level of traumatic stress and that emotion-focused coping would be the predictor to distress. METHOD: This was a cross-sectional survey with a retrospective design in which 66 community residents, who lived between 30 and 100 feet away from the crash site, were interviewed. The study began approximately 7 months after the disaster. The Impact of Event Scale (IES), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the Ways of Coping Checklists (WOC) were administered to the residents. RESULTS: On the whole, the results did not entirely support the hypothesis. The residents were found to have experienced some intrusive thoughts and avoidance behaviour but their mean scores were significantly lower than those of standardized samples. Thirty-five per cent scored at 4 or above on the GHQ-28. Traumatic stress was predicted by both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies. CONCLUSION: Although community residents were not on the train or related to the dead or injured in any way, they could, after being exposed to a train disaster, manifest traumatic stress symptoms which had long-lasting effects. Such traumatic stress was found to be associated with coping strategies of community residents characterized by their efforts to manage or alter the source of stress, and by their efforts to regulate stressful emotions.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2003

Psychological sequelae: post-traumatic stress reactions and personality factors among community residents as secondary victims.

The aims of the present study were twofold: first, to ascertain the severity of post-traumatic stress among community residents as secondary victims exposed to a train disaster. Secondly, we aimed to identify the association between post-traumatic stress and personality variables. Seven months after the train disaster in Stafford, United Kingdom, in 1996, 66 community residents were recruited and interviewed for the study. In the interviews, residents were assessed using the Impact of Event Scale (IES), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-R Short Scale (EPQ-R). Control group data were also collected, composed of 90 community residents who lived in another city and had not been exposed to the train disaster. They were assessed using the GHQ. The results showed that 51% of the residents scored at the high IES symptom level. No significant differences were found between the community residents who lived near and further away from the crash site in terms of the IES scores. Further analyses showed that the IES scores for the present two groups of community residents were significantly lower than those of Horowitz's standardized stress clinic samples, but higher than those of Danish rescue workers involved in a train rescue operation. The GHQ results showed that 35% could be considered to be psychiatric cases. The comparisons between the GHQ scores of the present community residents with those of the control group showed that there were significant differences in somatic problems, anxiety, depression and GHQ total. With regard to personality, the community residents who lived near to the crash site were significantly more introverted but less neurotic than Eysenck's standardized samples. The community residents who lived further away were significantly more introverted but less neurotic than the standardized samples. Regression analyses revealed that neuroticism predicted intrusion, avoidance and GHQ total. The conclusion was that there can be long-term, severe post-traumatic stress effects upon community residents, as secondary victims, after exposure to a train disaster. Residents with a neurotic personality tend to be associated with post-traumatic stress reactions and general health problems.

Accidents↗
PubMed2001

Childhood acute leukaemia and residential 16.7 Hz magnetic fields in Germany.

We observed a moderate but statistically non-significant association between magnetic fields (MF) and childhood leukaemia. This is the first such study to cover residential exposure to 16.7 Hz (railway frequency) MF though based on few exposed subjects. Our study does not exclude a small excess risk, but the attributable risk must be very low. It is reassuring that neglecting 16.7 Hz MF in childhood cancer studies appears to have little effect on findings.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2000

[Chemical accident in Schönbeck--an assessment of the risk to health and environment].

Travelling from Belgium to the BUNA works in Schkopau, ten of eighteen tank wagons filled with vinyl chloride (VC) derailed on the Magdeburg-Halle railway line just outside Schönebeck station. One wagon exploded and four others went up in flames. Buildings and trees in gardens located in the immediate vicinity of the track caught fire and burned. Four owners of garden plots suffered burns. A total of 28 people received inpatient treatment in a nearby hospital, another 268 people were treated as outpatients. The typical symptoms of fume poisoning such as headache, nausea, irritations of respiratory tract and eyes were the primarily diagnosed problems. The vegetation was damaged by flue gases and developing HCl causing fire and caustic burns. Fire brigades and special task forces succeeded to control the looming danger of health and environmental hazards by cooling the burning wagons and pumping the liquid gases from the tank wagons. Vinyl chloride which was released over several days was measured in residential areas to be 0.06-8 ml/m3 air. Vinyl chloride is a gas which is heavier than air. When exposed to light it will be degraded within a few days. A technical guide concentration of 3 ml/m3 air has been adopted for its cancerogenic potential. Dioxin values measured in soils and plants were in the natural range of 20 ng I-TE/kg DS. These values increased to 8300 ng at the very seat of the fire only. With the water used for fire fighting vinyl chloride penetrated into the groundwater revealing values of up to 73 mg/litre. A total of 292 urine samples taken from patients and members of the rescue forces, residents and a control group were tested for their contents of the VC metabolite thiodiacetic acid. However, this number does not allow to draw any conclusions with regard to a potential increase in the risk of cancer. With 0.27, 0.43 and 0.37 mg/litre of urine, the mean values are in the normal range for unexposed people. Only three cases showing values of up to 3.1 mg/litre indicated that a real exposure had taken place. The environmental and health authorities have evaluated the results of the measurements at site. They had set up a consultancy service and were integrated in civil forums. When the project "Extension of the vinyl chloride plant" for PVC production at Buna Sow Leuna Olefinverbund GmbH will be completed, deliveries of vinyl chloride by rail and road will be unnecessary in future. However, the problem of transporting dangerous goods and a complex training of task forces will continue to be of topical importance.

Accidents, Traffic↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Whole-body vibration of locomotive engineers.

Vibration of the seat and the body of a diesel locomotive and an electric locomotive were measured while driving on the railways of Eastern Finland. At the speed of 120 km/h for the diesel locomotive and 140 km/h for the electric locomotive (the greatest permissible speeds) the vibration of the seat was tangent to the "fatigue-decreased proficiency boundary" of the international standard ISO 2631/1(1) in the side-to-side direction in one-third octave bands of 1-1.6 Hz. The frequency response measurements between the body of the locomotive and the seat indicated that the seat did not reduce side-to-side vibration of the body at low frequencies where the vibration was most harmful.

Finland↗
PubMed2000

A case study of co-ordinative decision-making in disaster management.

A persistent problem in the management of response to disasters is the lack of co-ordination between the various agencies involved. This paper reports a case study of inter-agency co-ordination during the response to a railway accident in the UK. The case study examined two potential sources of difficulty for co-ordination: first, poorly shared mental models; and, second, a possible conflict between the requirements of distributed decision-making and the nature of individual decision-making. Interviews were conducted with six individuals from three response agencies. Analysis of reported events suggested that inter-agency co-ordination suffered through a widespread difficulty in constructing a reflexive shared mental model; that is, a shared mental representation of the distributed decision-making process itself, and its participants. This difficulty may be an inherent problem in the flexible development of temporary multi-agency organizations. The analysis focused on a distributed decision over how to transport casualties from an isolated location to hospital. This decision invoked a technique identified here as the progression of multiple options, which contrasts with both recognition-primed and analytical models of individual decision-making. The progression of multiple options appeared to be an effective technique for dealing with uncertainty, but was a further source of difficulty for inter-agency co-ordination.

Communication↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST): a novel integration of ergonomics methods to analyse C4i activity.

C4i is defined as the management infrastructure needed for the execution of a common goal supported by multiple agents in multiple locations and technology. In order to extract data from complex and diverse C4i scenarios a descriptive methodology called Event Analysis for Systemic Teamwork (EAST) has been developed. With over 90 existing ergonomics methodologies already available, the approach taken was to integrate a hierarchical task analysis, a coordination demand analysis, a communications usage diagram, a social network analysis, and the critical decision method. The outputs of these methods provide two summary representations in the form of an enhanced operation sequence diagram and a propositional network. These offer multiple overlapping perspectives on key descriptive constructs including who the agents are in a scenario, when tasks occur, where agents are located, how agents collaborate and communicate, what information is used, and what knowledge is shared. The application of these methods to live data drawn from the UK rail industry demonstrates how alternative scenarios can be compared on key metrics, how multiple perspectives on the same data can be taken, and what further detailed insights can be extracted. The ultimate aim of EAST is, by applying it across a number of scenarios in different civil and military domains, to provide data to develop generic models of C4i activity and to improve the design of systems aimed at enhancing this management infrastructure.

Communication↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A naturalistic study of railway controllers.

There is an increasing prevalence for work to be analysed through naturalistic study, especially using ethnographically derived methods of enquiry and qualitative field research. The relatively unexplored domain of railway control (in comparison to signalling) in the UK is described in terms of features derived from observations and semi-structured interviews. In addition, task diagrams (a technique taken from the Applied Cognitive Task Analysis toolkit) are used to represent controllers' core elements of work, i.e. to manage events or incidents, and to identify the challenging steps in the process. The work features identified, the task diagrams, and the steps identified as challenging form a basis from which future ergonomics studies on railway controllers in the UK will be carried out.

Cognition↗
PubMed2007

Progress in understanding processes underlying occupational accidents on the level based on case studies.

The purpose of this work was to further the knowledge of contexts surrounding accidents on the level in occupational situations with a view to proposing suitable actions for the prevention of these accidents. The study, undertaken at three establishments belonging to a national rail transport company, was based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of accident-on-the-level data available at the establishments concerned, typology of these accidents, interviews with victims and activity analysis. Understanding accidents on the level through building scenarios makes it possible to consider the relevance of prevention actions, such as workplace or environmental design/remediation and machine access system design. Moreover, it also makes it possible to consider curtailing the injury-causing aspect of the physical environment by reducing its 'aggressiveness'. Finally, the prospects emerging from this work in the research field are discussed.

Accidental Falls↗