Mental Fatigue

1. INTRODUCTION

Fatigue can be classified into two categories which is physical fatigue and mental fatigue where it usually caused by heavy workload hence can impairs the working performance. Basically, prolonged attention activities may cause of mental fatigue and there are many attention activities such as inspection, welding, office works and many more that lead to mental fatigue if the worker continuously working on it as Boksem et. al. (2005) Stated that, mental fatigue refers to the effects that people may experience after or during prolonged periods of cognitive activity. In the present research, the researcher want to study the factor between level of experience and the type of rest which will affect the mental fatigue in welding activities hence as expected outcome, the researcher would identify which type of work-rest are suitable with which level of experience in order to minimize the effect of mental fatigue.

1. Background of Study

Welding activities is a common and highly demand occupation in Malaysia industry especially in oil and gas, automobile and metal steel industry. High demand welding occupation in those industry with high salary make people are interested to join welding occupation. Certain company tend to hire an experienced welder to get the best performance so that can meet the customer requirement and other company have to hire less experienced welder where they can pay less than experienced one. Welding activities will affect the human safety and health since there are so many health issues that caused from the welding exposure such as chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, and interstitial lung disease, asthma and eye strain. Sudnik (2011) in his research “Arc welding health effect, fume formation mechanism and characterization” found that worker exposure to welding fume is most often associated with acute and chronic lung damage and Antonini et. al. (2004) Stated that, shorter exposure to welding fume can cause shortness of breath, irritation to eye, nose and throat, headache and nausea. Many researchers have been studied in how to control and minimize the welding exposure in engineering control approach and most of them were suggest the local exhaust ventilation (LEV). Chadim (1994) was suggested of use low diameter of electrode, using flexible hose of ventilation in controlling the welding exposure. Occupational safety and health (OSHA) guideline for welding fumes also have been published to control and monitor the safety and health of welder. OSHA has been listed the several methods to control exposure to welding fume: