A Model for Occupational Health Risk Assessment of Decoration Workers

During the past decade, decoration industry has been flourishing quickly in China due to the increasing transactions on the housing market and continuous improvement of people’s demand for high-standard living and office environment. While decoration can bring people more comfortable living environments, many adverse health effects will be exerted on occupants and decoration workers. Nowadays, indoor decoration pollution is being paid more attention but people tend to only focus on resident health while ignoring that of the decoration workers. Therefore, this paper firstly decomposes the decoration process to identify the pollutants generated during the process and then analyzes their harmful effects to workers’ health. Secondly, a risk assessment model of occupational health damage of decoration workers is developed for calculating occupational health risks by combining Occupational Risk Index Method and Singapore Semi-quantitative Risk Assessment Method. Finally, taking a decoration project in a residential district of Nanjing, China as an example, occupational health damage risk of workers is measured to verify the feasibility of constructed model. The main purpose of this study is to systematically analyze the health risk caused by decoration pollution to the workers from both physical and chemical perspectives. This research identifies main hazardous substances and their hazards in decoration and lays the foundation for formulating control and management plans for decoration pollution. Moreover, it provides a basis for the decoration enterprises and relevant government departments to design reasonable management measures and regulations.