Objectives : The role of ‘poisonous substances expert’ is used to denote individuals who are in charge of establishing and implementing policies related to poisonous substances, whereas that of ‘poisonous substances manager’ denotes individuals who carry out legal duties related to the poisonous substances management system within a site. To analyze various factors related to the poisonous substances designation system and to derive an improvement plan, it will be necessary first to identify the differences between the poisonous substances experts and the poisonous substances mangers. This research attempts to analyze the differences in the roles of poisonous substances experts of the Ministry of Environment, National Institute of Environmental Research, and Korea Chemicals Management Association, and the managers of the chemicals handling work sites. And this research is conducted to derive problem of poisonous substances appointment system and suggest basic data for the further improvement of the method by investigating the recognition level to the knowledge and needs for the improvement about poisonous substances appointment system between managers and experts.

Methods : In order to determine the level for awareness of poisonous substances designation system, trainees of poisonous substances manager training program that was implemented in Jeonnam, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan, and Gyeonggi from June 2012 to October 2012 were selected as the manager group, and individuals who implement duties related to poisonous substances in organizations like the Ministry of Environment, etc. were selected as the poisonous substances expert group. Altogether, questionnaires were distributed to a total of 390 people, 300 of which were recovered. Of the recovered questionnaires, 53 were omitted as the respondents were deemed to have responded insincerely or to have answered more than two items, and data submitted by the remaining 248 people were used for our research. The questionnaire was structured, using a self-administered survey research method. The questionnaire is composed of multiple items asking general characteristics, the recognition level to the knowledge and needs for the improvement about the system. The collected datawere analyzed with statistics method such as the t-test and ANOVA using SPSS v 16.0.

Results & Conclusion : In terms of comprehension of the poisonous substances designation system, the average score of managers (n=213) was 3.28 (SD. 0.63) and the average score of experts (n=35) was 4.08 (SD 0.59), revealing a statistically significant difference between the two groups (p<0.001). In recognition of the improvement there was no significant difference in the score of managers (mean = 3.11, SD 0.34) and that of experts (mean= 3.24, S.D. 0.31).
There was a statistically significant difference in the level of comprehension of the poisonous substances designation system for managers based on the education level of the employee(P<0.05), and based on the size of the company(P<0.05). On the basis of industry type, the level of comprehension was higher in the electrical/electronical industry and chemical/environmental industry than in other industries (p=0.066). The level of comprehension of the poisonous substances designation system was higher for those with 5 years of experience or more, than for those with less than 5 years of experience.
As for recognition of necessity for improvement, there was a statistically significant difference in the knowledge of managers, based on the size of the company (p<0.05).
In terms of comprehension of the experts, there was no statistically significant difference, but in terms of necessity for improvement, there was a statistically significant difference in recognition based on work experience(p<0.001).
Multiple regression analysis of independent variables of the managers and the experts revealed that the bigger the company size the higher the level of comprehension.
In a correlational analysis on comprehension of the poisonous substances designation system and on recognition of the necessity for improvement within each operational system, those with a higher comprehension of the poisonous substances designation system had a higher rate of recognition of the necessity for improvement, for both the manager group and for the expert group.
Key words: poisonous substances designation system, poisonous substances manager, recognition, poisonous substances, toxic chemicals