Relationship between Lifting Capacity and Injury in Occupations Requiring Lifting

Abstract

There are several factors which affect the lifting capacity. These factors can be categorized under the following:

1. 1.

individual characteristics,

2.

task variables, and

3.

environmental conditions.

This paper presents the methods used to determine the lifting capacity for male and female industrial workers, as well as the models developed to predict this capacity under several conditions of the task variables (height level, frequency, and box size). Since overloading and underloading in manual materials handling is undesirable, field data were collected to investigate the effects of job demands on manual materials handling injuries.

As opposed to the physiological approach, no difference was found in the lifting capacity due to age. While both weight and work rate are important, work rate was a more effective and logical single measure of back injuries or stress than weight.