Health Surveillance of Forestry Workers Exposed to Hand-Arm Vibration in Wakayama from 1974 to 1996.

Forty-two noise exposures and 164 whole-body (WBV) and hand-arm (HAV) vibration exposures were collected from 43 forestry workers in six trades employed by two forestry companies. Data were collected on 10 days over 8 weeks during various felling, logging, and log handling operations. Up to 5 volunteers were monitored for noise and vibration daily using datalogging noise dosimeters, which provided daily time-weighted averages (TWAs) and 1-min averages; and a precision sound level meter equipped to measure human vibration, which provided triaxial HAV and WBV event-weighted averages (AEQS). Workers completed a short questionnaire throughout the workday detailing the timing and number of tasks performed and equipment used. Substantial overexposures to noise and vibration were seen; for example, 60% of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) TWAs and 83% of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) noise TWAs exceeded 85 dBA, 33-53% of the axis-specific HAV AEQS exceeded the 8-hour American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists' HAV threshold limit value, and 34% of all summary weighted WBV AEQS exceeded the Commission of the European Communities' 8-hour exposure limit. The mean for 99 WBV summary weighted AEQ was 3.53 +/- 7.12 m/sec2, whereas the mean for 65 HAV summary weighted AEQ was 5.45 +/- 5.25 m/sec2. The mean OSHA TWA was 86.1 +/- 6.2 dBA, whereas the mean NIOSH TWA was 90.2 +/- 5.1 dBA. The task and tool with the highest exposure levels were unbelling chokers on landings and chain saws (noise), log processing and frontend loaders (WBV), and notching stumps and chain saws (HAV). An internal validation substudy indicated excellent agreement between worker-reported and researcher-documented tasks and tools.

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The Standardized Nordic Questionnaire Applied to Workers Exposed to Hand‐Arm Vibration

Kaewboonchoo

Yamamoto

Miyai

et al. 1998

Journal of Occupational Health

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Abstract:The Standardized Nordic Questionnaire Applied to Workers Exposed to Hand-Arm Vibration: Orawan KaewBOONCHOO, etal. Department of Hygiene, School of Medicine, Wakayama Medical UniversityThe standardized Nordic questionnaire (SNQ) is not yet widely used in Japan.This paper describes the possibility whether the SNQ, translated into Japanese, can be applied to workers exposed to hand-arm vibration. The musculoskeletal symptoms of 40 chain saw operators (CS) in private forests and 40 agematched bush cleaner operators (BC) in the public service sector were assessed by the SNQ and the Japanese questionnaire (JQ). Both the SNQ and the JQ showed that CS had a higher prevalence of symptoms than BC. By the SNQ, there were significant differences in the prevalence of musculoskeletal symptom in the elbows, upper back and knees. By the JQ, CS had significantly higher prevalence of pain in the shoulders and elbows than BC. These results show the SNQ also fits the musculoskeletal symptoms and clearly differentiates between the prevalences in the two groups. The SNQ enables us to identify the severity, the duration, the treatment and the disability, but does not include items related to finger numbness and finger blanching. For that reason some JQ items should be applied to workers exposed to hand-arm vibration. (J Occup Health 1998; 40: 218-222)

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Health Surveillance of Forestry Workers Exposed to Hand-Arm Vibration in Wakayama from 1974 to 1996.

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The Standardized Nordic Questionnaire Applied to Workers Exposed to Hand‐Arm Vibration

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