Citation

Laughery KR, Schmidt JK. Proc. Hum. Factors Ergon. Soc. Annu. Meet. 1984; 28(5): 471-475.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1984, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/154193128402800519

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Scenario analyses were carried out on 229 back injuries occuring over two years in a large petro-chemical manufacturing complex. The patterns indicated that most injuries were a direct result of overexertion in performing a task. Materials handling was the most common task, accounting for 35% of the cases. Two other tasks also accounted for a substantial number of injuries: operating a valve (17%) and assembling or disassembling equipment (18%). A much less common but noteworthy set of scenarios indicated that many back injuries occur in situations where unexpected movement in the person-equipment interface takes place. Age and sex were not significant factors in back injury rates. A higher proportion of injuries were major (OSHA recordable) than is usually found for industrial accidents in general.

Language: en