Knowledge of Occupational Hazards, Attitude and Practice of Occupational Safety Measures Among Construction Workers in Different Building Sites Located in Ibeju-Lekki Local Government Area of Lagos State, Nigeria.

This is a descriptive cross sectional study aimed at studying the knowledge of occupational hazards, attitude to and practice of occupational safety measures and prevalence of occupational injuries among construction workers in different building sites located at Ibeju-Lekki Local Government in Lagos State. A structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used for construction workers present at the sampled building sites with active ongoing construction activities for six weeks duration. Multistage Clustering sampling was used and a total of 420 respondents participated in the study. Most of the respondents were between 25 to 34 years of age with a mean value of 29.46 ± 7.08 years. The mean knowledge of occupation hazards of respondents was 51.9 ± 17.3 with the majority of respondent (61.9%) having good knowledge of construction occupational hazards. Poor attitude to occupational safety measures with mean value of 45.4 ± 12.8 and poor practice of occupational safety measures with mean value of 31.9 ± 10.4 was observed. A higher proportion of respondents reported cases of injuries ranging from puncturing of foots by sharp objects (95.2%), falling on ground level (89.5%) and injury while handling, lifting or carrying loads (87.4%). Respondents’ knowledge of occupational hazards was found to be statistically associated with their attitude to and practice of occupational measures while their attitude to safety measure is statistically associated with their practice. Hence, the need to provide adequate information on construction hazards and improve the attitude to occupational safety measures for high practice of safety measures especially the utilization of personal protective equipment

Strength Development in Lateritic Soil Stabilised with Coconut Shell Ash for Highway Pavement Construction

Lateritic soil has found wide usage in highway pavement construction in the tropics, however, there are instances that they are unsuitable because of their properties, hence the need for improvement through stabilisation. This research focussed on the utilisation of coconut shell ash for stabilising of lateritic soil for highway pavement construction. The lateritic soil was treated with 3 to 12% coconut shell ash (CSA) to assess its effect as a soil stabilising admixture on the geotechnical properties of the lateritic soil while the soil with 0% CSA is the control. The percentage passing sieve no. 200, liquid limit and plasticity index reduced with increase in the CSA content, this indicates that the susceptibility of the soil for water has been reduced. However, the maximum dry densities of the treated soil increased with increasing content of CSA but the strength index, California bearing ratio (CBR) decreased. Coconut shell ash though is a good pozzolan cannot therefore be used as a stand-alone stabilizer for treating lateritic soil however, the stabilized soil could be used as a subgrade foundation material in road pavement construction. Keywords: Coconut shell ash, Lateritic soil, Stabilization, Highway Pavement, Compaction, California bearing rati