#0032 Assessing the effect of mandatory progress reporting on treatment requirements identified during health examinations at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant: A time series analysis
Effect of Mandatory Progress Reporting on Treatment Requirements of Nuclear Plant Workers
Following the deadly 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and several recent cases of sudden on-site worker fatalities, new healthcare procedures were introduced for workers in 2016.
The administrative instructions were issued by the Fukushima Labor Bureau to ensure the health of decommissioning workers employed by Tokyo’s Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and other contractors responsible for the power plant. Advised by experts from Japan’s University of Occupational and Environmental Health (UOEH), TEPCO implemented new countermeasures involving a mandatory progress reporting approach to certify that workers were receiving additional health examinations or treatment when necessary.
In our study, we conducted a time series analysis to understand whether mandatory progress reporting had an effect on how promptly follow-up health examinations were being conducted, as well as on the number of workers receiving treatment. We collected and assessed quarterly medical reports from workers and observed linear trends from 2016 to 2018.
Our findings showed that introducing thorough reporting procedures had an overall positive effect on the fitness for duty examinations at the power plant. We observed that there was an overall increase in the number of both early visits for additional examinations and workers receiving treatment over time. Moreover, the number of workers with unmet health requirements decreased correspondingly.
Thus, we showed that mandatory progress reporting has been beneficial to workers at nuclear power plants and should be continued. To sum up, our analysis has provided useful insights on supportive healthcare initiatives to reduce the potential risk of sudden death among workers performing dangerous tasks, such as those engaged in nuclear power plant decommissioning. There have been a limited number of previous studies conducted on occupational health support for workers providing post-disaster responses. This analysis not only sheds light on potential countermeasures but also offers new information that can be applied to the context of nuclear power plants and to future disaster responses.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1348-9585.12111
Title of the paper:
Assessing the effect of mandatory progress reporting on treatment requirements identified during health examinations at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant: A time series analysis
Authors:
Koji Mori, Seiichiro Tateishi, Tatsuhiko Kubo, Yuichi Kobayashi, Ko Hiraoka, Futoshi Kawashita, Takeshi Hayashi, Yoshifumi Kiyomoto, Masaki Kobashi, Kota Fukai, Hiroyuki Tahara, Ryuji Okazaki, Akira Ogami, Kazuyuki Igari, Katsunori Suzuki, Hiroshi Kikuchi, Kazuchiro Sakai, Toru Yoshikawa, Yoshihisa Fujino
