Cost-efficient assessment of biomechanical exposure in occupational groups, exemplified by posture observation and inclinometry

Trask, Catherine; Mathiassen, Svend Erik; Wahlström, Jens; Forsman, Mikael

doi:10.5271/sjweh.3416

Cited by 45 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…by occupational physicians. However, observations may be as resource demanding as measurements, and may introduce bias [53]. The choice of thresholds may be based on hypotheses on pathogenesis [27] and safe lower levels of exposure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences in Task Distribution and Task Exposures among Danish House Painters: An Observational Study Combining Questionnaire Data with Biomechanical Measurements

et al. 2014

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ObjectivesSex differences in occupational biomechanical exposures may be part of the explanation why musculoskeletal complaints and disorders tend to be more common among women than among men. We aimed to determine possible sex differences in task distribution and task-specific postures and movements of the upper extremities among Danish house painters, and to establish sex-specific task exposure matrices.MethodsTo obtain task distributions, we sent out a questionnaire to all members of the Painters' Union in Denmark (N = 9364), of whom 53% responded. Respondents reported their task distributions in a typical week. To obtain task exposures, postures and movements were measured in 25 male and 25 female house painters for one whole working day per person. We used goniometers on the wrists, and inclinometers on the forehead and the upper arms. Participants filled in a logbook allowing task-specific exposures to be identified. Percentiles and % time with non-neutral postures were used to characterise postures. Velocity, range of motion, repetitiveness, and variation were used as measures of movement. Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistics and unpaired double-sided t-tests with post-hoc Bonferroni correction were used to evaluate sex differences.ResultsStatistically significant (p<0.05) sex differences were revealed in task proportions, but the proportions differed by less than 4%. For task exposures, no statistically significant sex differences were found.ConclusionsOnly minor sex differences were found in task distribution and task exposures regarding postures and movements among Danish house painters. Sex-specific task exposure matrices were established.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex Differences in Task Distribution and Task Exposures among Danish House Painters: An Observational Study Combining Questionnaire Data with Biomechanical Measurements

et al. 2014

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“…Thus, it is difficult to obtain an accurate estimate of the physical load during working situations using only observations (Eliasson et al 2017;Takala et al 2010). Moreover, a study by Trask and co-workers showed that in most situations assessment of trunk and upper arm inclination was more cost-effective using inclinometers than using visual posture observations (Trask et al 2014).…”

Section: Kinematicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accuracy of identification of low or high risk lifting during standardised lifting situations

et al. 2017

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The aim was to classify lifting activities into low and high risk categories (according to The Danish Working Environment Authority guidelines) based on surface electromyography (sEMG) and trunk inclination (tri-axial accelerometer) measurements. Lifting tasks with different weights, horizontal distance and technique were performed. The lifting tasks were characterised by a feature vector composed of either the 90th, 95th or 99th percentile of sEMG activity level and trunk inclinations during the task. Linear Discriminant Analysis and a subject-specific threshold scheme were applied and lifting tasks were classified with an accuracy of 65.1-65.5%. When lifts were classified based on the subject-specific threshold scheme from low and upper back accelerometers, the accuracy reached 52.1-58.1% and 72.7-78.1%, respectively. In conclusion, the use of subject-specific thresholds from sEMG from upper trapezius and erector spinae as well as inclination of the upper trunk enabled us to identify low and high risk lifts with an acceptable accuracy.Practitioner Summary: This study contributes to the development of a method enabling the automatic detection of high risk lifting tasks, i.e. exposure to high biomechanical loads, based on individual sEMG and kinematics from an entire working day. These methods may be more costeffective and may complement observations commonly used by practitioners.

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“…In this line of development, we encourage paying consideration to the trade-off between resources required to collect predictors and the eventual performance of the model. We did not in the present study compare costs associated with collecting exposure data directly by objective measurements versus costs of developing prediction models using questionnaire data, but we emphasize that a major rationale for modeling exposures in future studies would be that they deliver more exposure data at a lower cost than objective measurements, and thus represent a favorable trade-off between cost and performance (57,58). We also emphasize the need for validating the performance of any future model in new datasets, either using a genuinely new sample or by internal bootstrap validation techniques; this has very rarely been attempted in previous modelling studies (41).…”

Section: Gupta Et Almentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of objectively measured physical activity and sedentariness among blue-collar work using survey questionnaires

Gupta¹,

Heiden²,

Mathiassen³

et al. 2016

Scand J Work Environ Health

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Cost-efficient assessment of biomechanical exposure in occupational groups, exemplified by posture observation and inclinometry

Cited by 45 publications

References 53 publications

Sex Differences in Task Distribution and Task Exposures among Danish House Painters: An Observational Study Combining Questionnaire Data with Biomechanical Measurements

Sex Differences in Task Distribution and Task Exposures among Danish House Painters: An Observational Study Combining Questionnaire Data with Biomechanical Measurements

Accuracy of identification of low or high risk lifting during standardised lifting situations

Prediction of objectively measured physical activity and sedentariness among blue-collar work using survey questionnaires

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