Back Safety: Preventive Strategies from the Experts

What malady affects 45–60 million Americans, including 70 percent to 80 percent of all workers, at some time in their careers?

What’s the second-leading cause of lost workdays, right behind the common cold, with estimated annual costs to business of some $60 billion?

What’s the most frequent cause of workers under age 45 going on disability?

The answer to all three questions is the same, according to information provided by the BLR training program, Interactive CD Course: Back Safety.

It’s lower back problems.

All this is bad news for business. But there’s good news, too.

Back problems are relatively easy to avoid, with a few precautions. And even when they occur, they’re generally curable. “In about 90 percent of back cases, the cause is strain or sprain of back muscles, ligaments or soft tissue,” says Dr. Diane Braza of the Medical College of Wisconsin, quoted in the BLR print newsletter, OSHA Compliance Advisor. “These conditions generally heal completely,” but, she warns, “they often recur if prevention strategies are not used.”

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BLR’s Interactive CD Course: Back Safety can provide the training workers need to make your company gain without anyone suffering the pain. Try it at no cost or risk. Click for more info.

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The answer, then, to both curing current back troubles and warding off new ones: Do everything you can to prevent back injury.

The prevention strategies Braza refers to come in several varieties.

Engineering solutions. Ergonomics is the science of making tools, equipment, furnishings, and so on fit the way the human body naturally moves. In day-to-day terms, that means choosing workplace equipment that takes ergonomic factors into account in their design and operation. A growing number of such products are available. In the office, experts suggest chairs that encourage proper posture, computer monitors and keyboards with adjustable heights, and workstations designed for easy reach to needed items, to minimize twisting and turning motions.

In industrial or warehouse settings, engineering solutions include reducing loads on workers’ backs and muscles by providing mechanized equipment such as conveyors, forklifts, and pallet jacks to move and lift loads, as well as tools built around how the body naturally functions.

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Try BLR’s Interactive CD Course: Back Safety at no cost or risk. Click for details.

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Administrative solutions. Since time on task and repetition are important factors in muscle damage, management can lessen the load, say the authors of Interactive CD Course: Back Safety, by such measures as prework exercise and stretching routines, job and employee rotation, more rest breaks, a slower production pace, and a look at how changes in current job practices would lessen the strain. Workers should be consulted in this, as they usually know the job best. (Assemblers at a Honda motorcycle plant in Ohio, for example, recently suggested turning engines sideways before installation in frames, making the job go faster as well as being easier on those who did it.)

PPE. A number of solutions to protect the back and other muscle groups are available, such as back belts. Even proper footwear can contribute to better posture, which also protects the back.

Finally, given the fact that even more back injuries occur off the job than on it (with job impact either way), there’s the solution that could do the most good: It’s training and educating workers about why back problems happen and how to best utilize their bodies to prevent injuries.

We’ll provide you with some helpful tips to train on in tomorrow’s Safety Daily Advisor.