From the viewpoint of social psychology, we can suggest there are 2 different aspects in human attitudes to nature disasters such as earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, storms and floods. One is to think little of disasters and become defenseless. The other is to fear disasters excessively and to be confused. In many case, these two psychological attitudes exists in one person. He sometimes underestimates damages before disasters happen, but is excessively afraid that disasters may attack him.
People underestimate damages of disasters partly because they have little knowledge of natural disasters. For example, after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, it was pointed out that many people in Kobe had groundless belief that no big earthquake could attack them, and had not sufficient countermeasures to earthquake. But many seismologists warned that big earthquakes might happen around Kobe or Osaka. There was great knowledge-gap between specialists and general people about disasters and it might expand damages of the earthquake.
People underestimate damages of disasters partly because they could not believe they might be killed or wounded while they had much knowledge about disaster. For instance, in eruption of the Unzen Mountain in 1993 large pyroclastic flow killed more than 10 journalists who had stepped in very dangerous area. Many of them got fairly deep knowledge of pyroclastic flow to cover the eruption, but they least expected the very flow might attack them.
However, such psychological attitudes are totally changed after a large disaster occurred, and many people become sensitive excessively. They thought since the large disaster unexpectedly happened, the other disasters would occur at any time. They became uneasy and anxious. About a week after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, rumors such that another great earthquake of seismic intensity 6 would attack Kobe and Osaka spread widely in the damaged area, and many people asked meteorological observatories and fire stations. We cannot say it is a great social confusion, but all such cases occur after great disasters occurred.

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Japanese Medical Association has an arbitration system to solve medical malpractice controversies although its entire procedures are in camera. To look at various sources on medical controversies in Japan, we estimate that only ten percent of medical controversies go to courts and only one percent of all controversies result in verdicts for patients. Medical maloccurrences are not outcomes of mere carelessness. We need to check the incidental factors which induced individual carelessness. To prevent real accidents, we should investigate near miss incidents. Heinlich's law on workers' accidents shows that one accident with serious injuries exists with twenty-nine accidents with minor injuries and three hundred incidents without any injury. Furthermore, it is very important to keep fine relationship and good communication not only among healthcare providers but also between providers and patients in order to avoid the increase of medical malpractice controversies.

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In the present paper, it was intended to describe 1) present situation of occupational accidents in Japan, 2) current investigation system for occupational accidents, 3) present countermeasures for occupational accidents, and 4) proposal for prevention of occupational accidents from epidemiological point of view.
In Japan, number of deaths due to occupational accidents decreased dramatically form 1970 through 1986. But no such decline has been observed last 10 years, even various countermeasures has been applied for prevention of occupational accidents.
In order to make present countermeasures more effective, epidemiological approaches have been proposed as stated below; 1) to strengthen descriptive epidemiology using original data of present accident reports, near miss cases reports etc. 2) to apply analytical epidemiology (case control study, cohort study) or intervention study to clarify causal factors for occupational accidents, 3) to stimulate epidemiological method to evaluate effectiveness of countermeasures taken and 4) to encourage multidisciplinary approaches to prevent occupational accidents (medical science, epidemiology, information science, behavioral science, psychology, safety engineering, ergonomics, human factor engineering, etc.).

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For risk management of accidents and disasters, many governments have developed risk management systems for accidental releases of chemicals, nuclear power plant accidents or natural disasters, etc. When we analyze injury occurrences from accidents and disasters on the basis of a concept of ‘risk’ which is defined as a probability of occurrence of advise effects, it becomes possible for us to analyze quantitatively the causes of injury occurrence and prevention methods. It is further requested for us to examine risk behavior as a human factor related to accidental injury prevention.
Risk behavior analysis for injury prevention has been introduced very recently. Generally, risk behavior analysis can be divided into two types of analyses; i.e., (1) risk assessment studies of risk behavior using epidemiology to quantitatively analyze the properties of risk behavior induced the risk of injury, and (2) risk management studies that quantitatively identify a cost-effective strategy to prevent occurrence of injury risk based on risk assessment study of risk behavior. In the present paper, we first outlined the recent studies of risk assessment and management of risk behavior associated with accidents in a community (e.g., traffic accidents, children's accidents), then we discussed the availability of risk behavior analysis to injury prevention.(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

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