Chemical mismanagement and skin burns among hospitalized and outpatient department patients

Abstract

Purpose. This article attempts to elucidate the nature of chemicals causing major and minor skin burns, and their associated characterization across different industries, using Fujian provincial hospitals’ admission and outpatient department records. Materials and methods. Data were collected from the provincial hospitals of Fujian through a questionnaire, sent via email, from June 1, 2017 to November 30, 2017. The collected responses were statistically analyzed using SPSS version 19 through the interquartile range, median, Mann–Whitney U test and Fisher’s exact test with two-tailed significance. Results and conclusions. The results of 306 collected responses reveal that the majority of skin burn cases are due to a lack of technical education and professional training among workers handling chemicals. This study suggests that management’s effective supervision and governmental regulations may help to prevent chemical skin burns at work, and can further be controlled by hiring professional workers alongside providing training to them in chemical handling as well as using protective equipment and developing appropriate management policies to improve victims’ well-being and quality of life. Findings will help workers, doctors, hospitals, industries, government and other stakeholders to understand and control chemical hazards on site to minimize the risks of chemical skin burn incidents.

Keywords:

• chemical burns
• skin burns
• burn prevention
• occupational health and safety
• management
• well-being
• quality of life

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the cooperation of 13 hospitals of Fujian Province for their generous help in providing details of chemical burns' incidents. We also acknowledge the support of United Hospital Fuzhou (UHF) for actively participating in this research work. We would also like to thanks the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China [Grant Number 2015CB632405]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 71772126]; National Basic Research Program of China [Grant Number 2016CB260406].