low back pain

Friday Five – 6/9/17

Quin Bond, CEAS IIILeave a comment

The Friday Five is a set of five links that I have come across this week that pertain to ergonomics, occupational health, safety, human performance, or human factors.  For whatever reason, I found them interesting, but they are provided with minimal or no commentary and are not meant to be endorsement for a given product or research paper.
These links were generated during a PubMed search on the terms: ergonomics workplace and ergonomics musculoskeletal

Love et al.  look into the ergonomic issues associated with home health care workers and what can be done to reduce the risk of injury.

Ceshi et al. examine the impact of exhaustion, workplace demands, and workplace resources affect decision making and the subsequent impact on performance.

Pandalia et al.  investigate usage of a Composite Lifting Index to assess risk of low back pain in material handling tasks.

Chen et al. looked at the psychophysical limits on lifting a weighted box between younger and older female workers.  Women between the ages of 50 and 63 years old chose weights that were approximately 24% less than the younger co-hort (between 20 and 32 years old).

Antonucci et al. examined the effect of drill bit wear on vibration and task performance.  Drill bit wear creates an increase in the vibration of the drill and increases time to complete task performance.  Antonucci et al. recommend instituting drill bit replacement protocls for when drill bits become worn.

 

 

Friday Five 4/21/17

Quin Bond, CEAS IIILeave a comment

The Friday Five is a set of five links that I have come across this week that pertain to ergonomics, occupational health, safety, human performance, or human factors.  For whatever reason, I found them interesting, but they are provided with minimal or no commentary and are not meant to be endorsement for a given product or research paper.

These links were generated during a PubMed search on the terms: ergonomics and obesity and using the new relevance button.

Cavuato and Nussbaum examined the effects of age and obesity on the performance of upper extremity activities.  They noted impairments in task performance due to fatigue, loss of strength, and discomfort during task performance related to obesity but not related to age.

Koepp et al. reviewed injury data from the Idaho National Laboratory which belongs to the Department of Energy.   In reviewing six years worth of injury data, 51% of those involved in slip, trip, and fall injuries were obese based on BMI values with a mean BMI of 31+/- 6.   This is similar to data from Ren et al. that looked at injuries in Texas which found a significant association between higher BMI levels and injuries from falls in an over 45 population.

DePaula et al.  looked into the relationship of loaded school backpacks and students (aged 10-19).  As 53 of the 339 students were considered to be obese, they provide the reminder that when looking at group data when generating percentage of body weight load for backpacks, the anthropometric breakdown for those in the sample group needs to be looked at.

Lerner et al. looked at a new marker set for collection of kinematic and kinetic data for obese subjects during gait testing.  The new obesity specific marker set was compared against a modified Helen Hayes marker set and found to have good agreement in non-obese subjects.  A significant effect was seen when comparing the marker sets with obese subjects.

Thorp et al. found that altering posture from sitting to standing every 30 minutes across the workday reduced fatigue levels and lower back pain in obese office workers while maintaining productivity.  They recommend future investigations to determine whether sustained use of adjustable height workstations affects concentration.

 

 

 

Friday Five – 3/24/17

Quin Bond, CEAS IIILeave a comment

The Friday Five is a set of five links that I have come across this week that pertain to ergonomics, occupational health, safety, human performance, or human factors.  For whatever reason, I found them interesting, but they are provided with minimal or no commentary and are not meant to be endorsement for a given product.

This week’s Five are new entries to PubMed under the search terms of: occupational safety.

Smith et al. look at physical activity assessment tools that are used in primary care.  They found that the tools are not sufficient to give practitioners the information necessary to guide interventions.  This is not surprising as most of the public does not have a solid concept of the level of physical activity that they perform across a given week.

Samelli et al. review the efficacy of using a tablet based hearing test.  For areas where there is low access to audiologists for hearing tests, this may be of interest.

Spira-Cohen et al. spent several weeks recording sound level data in New York City restaurants, bars, lounges, and clubs as part of a pilot study to assess sound level exposure to employees and patrons.  Of note, “In 49% (N=29) of the venues, the visit exceeded the maximum allowable daily noise dose based on National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) of 85 dBA 8-hr Time-Weighted Average (TWA)”

Hemmatjo et al. investigated the effect of different cooling strategies (cooling vest, cooling gel, cooling gel + vest) on firefighters when performing simulated firefighting tasks.

Kajiki et al. performed a randomized clinical trial of participating ergonomic intervention training that looked at low back training in a work environment.  It isn’t often that companies are willing to place their employees in studies such as this.  The authors include a good discussion about the results of their study and limitations within the study.  They also acknowledge that the ergonomic intervention training has a half-life (my choice of terminology) – over time, the impact of training wears off and needs to be repeated on a regular basis.  This is something that we have seen with clients that we provide material handling training services.