Honeywell ergonomic program

This article from Ergoweb describes Keith Osborne's work to design an ergonomic program at one of Honeywell's Colorado based plants.  His approach is similar to other institutions around the country including the one used at the University of Minnesota.  His program incorporates an ergonomic show room where people can view chairs and try out ergonomic equipment.  This improves the customer experience and eliminates the need people to make trips to various vendors or the vendors to drop off products. 

Incoporating additional options such as virtual ergonomic evaluations also allows reduces response time to branch offices in large corporations.  People can also self evaluate their workstation using a handy guide from the U of Minnesota.

http://www.dehs.umn.edu/ergo_office_weChecklist.htm

Effects of sleep deprivation

NIOSH research on sleep deprivation has shown that 30% of workers are sleep deprived.  Sleep deprivation due to shift work was linked to adverse reproductive outcomes in Nurses. 

Police officers working night shifts had greater risks of injury and metabolic syndrome than did day shift workers. Metabolic syndrome comprises a group of risk factors associated with coronary arteryt disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke.

For other jobs such as trucking manufacturing and white collar workers reduced sleep was linked to depression, injury and reduced ability of the natural killer cells to defend against cancer and viruses.

In this less than five minute video clip, a news anchor goes through 30 plus hours of sleep deprivation.  The footage is from News 2 in Charleston , NC.

 Driver impairment is a significant problem associated with sleep impairment noted in this video with Dr. Christopher Nolte on the Dr. Bob talk show.



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Lifting guidelines

The applications manual for the NIOSH lifting equation information is found at this site as a free downloadable pdf.   The equation considers the weight of the object, the travel distance for the object, the distance the object is away from the body, the vertical lift distance, lift frequency and other factors.

The Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation has a nice weight lifting chart visually depicting areas and zones for acceptable lifts.  It considers factors for weight, lift position, reach distance and degree of twist.

Curative care has a simple picture guideline for a box lift. 

http://www.hse.gov.uk/airtransport/case-studies/removal-of-hydrant-pot-lids.htm