Vibration Exposure Assessment of Sawmilling Operations Using Hand- Arm-Vibration Exposure Analysis

Abstract

Sawmills are workshops where woods are turned into finished products through the use of industrial machines and sophisticated implements. However, sawmills workers become exposed to awkward working postures and vibration from the machines they work with every day, leading to Raynaud's disease and muscle damage. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of the sawmill-machine-generated vibrations on the musculoskeletal disorders of sawmill workers in the Southwestern part of Nigeria using hand-arm-vibration analysis. Sawmills that were fully functional in Osun, Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Lagos, and the Ogun States of the Southwestern part of Nigeria were used for this study. After reconnaissance visits, four sawmills operating at full capacities in two cities of each State (i.e. 2 sawmills per city) were eventually chosen and used for data collection, thereby making a total of 24 selected sawmills. Circular Machines (CMs), Planer Machines (PMs), and Band-saw Machines (BMs) which are the commonly used machines by sawmills were considered for analysis, Vibration Exposure Assessment of Sawmilling Operations using Hand-ARM-Vibration Exposure Analysis