The applications of information and communication technology (ICT) into real industrial fields are getting great attentions in recent years. More and more industrial practitioners and scientific researchers are conducting studies and trying to adopt the technologies into diverse industrial fields. The purpose of this study is to review the technologies such as big data and smart sensors and to provide application cases in order to facilitate grafting the 4th industrial revolutionary technologies onto the safety and health systems. Based on the comprehensive reviews on literature, reports, and industrial cases, we found that big data technology has been used in industries for investigating work related disease. In addition, digital image technology and drone have been applied to establish safety system in construction industry. Lastly, some companies have tried to apply the technologies to build their own safety and health system.

Safety and health related information for the proper use and handling of pesticides is usually printed on the surface of the pesticide products (bottle type or bag type) in the form of texts. But, the guidelines or standards for the appropriate presentation of the texts for the pesticide products are most vague or not practical. Thus, this study aimed to provide the preliminary guidelines for the text sizes based on the legibility experiments. Total twenty subjects from two age groups (young: n=10, old: n=10, five males and five females in each group) participated in the experiment. First, subjects read the text cards presented in the distance of 50cm from the eyes of the subjects. Eight different text card sets were prepared for different font type(thick gothic-type and fine gothic-type), thickness of font(plain and bold), and number of syllables (2 and 3 syllables). When subjects read the cards, the correctness of reading (correct or wrong) was recorded and the degree of discomfort (from 1: no discomfort at all to 4: can't read at all) was also evaluated for all the text sizes. Results showed that the character size should be 4 pt or larger for the young subjects to read at least one word correctly in all the text conditions. For the old subjects to read at least one word correctly, the character size should be five pt or larder. The average of the minimum character sizes for 100% correct answer is 6.1 pt for young subjects and 10.5 pt for old subjects, respectively.

Texts and icons are used to deliver the safety and health information on pesticide labels. This study surveyed the standards or guidelines regarding the presentation formats of texts and icons used in pesticides. Also, the text and icon formats being used in the 50 pesticide products in Korea were investigated in the aspects of size, font (texts only), color. From the guideline survey, it was found that while the guidelines for the text fonts and colors in pesticides were suggested, there was no detailed guidelines about the text size. For the icon presentation, it was regulated that the icon size for the pesticides should be larger than 7mm×7mm, and this size was equivalent to the size when the reading distance of 28 ㎝ was applied to other two guidelines. From the sample survey of the 50 pesticides, it was found that the small text size being used in the 50 pesticides was 1mm (3pt), and this size was considered to be very difficult to be read, particularly by old people. The minimum size of the texts for the toxicity of the pesticide, the very important safety information, was found to be 1.5 mm, which is considered to be very uncomfortable to be read. The size of icons were varied from 2 to 12 mm, and the total average size was 4.6 mm. The 149 icons from a total 187 icons (80%) were smaller than the icon presentation guideline (7mm×7mm), and the reason for the small icon size might be the small area of the label of the pesticides. Thus, more detailed guidelines for the text size and more practical guidelines for the size of icons are required.

In this study, we have developed the database of safety and health information for pesticide active ingredients used in Korea. There were 1,283 pesticide items among which 296 were found to be out of use in current. A total of 349 pesticide ingredients were being used in Korea. The database consists of 32 types of information including chemical characteristics, acute toxicity, chronic toxicity (carcinogenic and reproductive toxicity), specific symptoms by exposure route and first aid. When pesticide ingredients were assessed in terms of key properties such as color, odor, acute toxicity, carcinogenic and reproductive toxicity, they were white, colorless and odorless, in general. When ingredients were classified by category of acute toxicity, 'Non-hazardous' represented 29%, followed by 'Slightly hazardous' at 16%, 'Moderately hazardous' at 14%, 'Highly hazardous' at 5%, and 'Extremely hazardous' at 2%. 85 out of 349, or 24% of ingredients were found to be possibly carcinogenic to human. This database is expected to provide an easy access for farmers, agriculture supervisors, researchers and consumers, and it can ultimately be used as basic data on farmer's safety and health.

This study surveyed the reading discomforts and the reasons for discomfortable reading of the safety and health information (texts and icons) presented on the agricultural vehicles/machines, pesticides, fertilizers, and feeds. Eighty seven people residing in rural area participated in the survey interview. Questionnaire survey showed that the most discomfortable product in reading the texts was pesticides. Forty three (49%) among participants had very-discomfortable or discomfortable in reading the texts used in the label of pesticides, and the main reason for the discomfort was small text size. The reading discomforts in reading the texts (varied from 4 point to 19 point and presented in 50 cm reading distance) showed different pattern according to the age groups. Three age groups (50s, 60s and older than 70s) showed a similar discomfort pattern, but different from the group of 30s and 40s. Forty four people (51%) had a problem in understanding the meaning of the icons and the main reasons were the small size and the difficulty in inferring the meaning of the icons. Thus, the more detailed and practical guidelines for the presentation format, particularly about the text heights and the size of icons, are required. Also, more comprehensive research is needed to investigate the readability and legibility of texts and icons.