The Importance of Ergonomics for the Safety Professional

Believe it or not, ergonomics can make your job easier and keep your work force safer. Regardless of your industry or the size of your company, applied ergonomics can help you get a good night's sleep. Along with the satisfaction that your work force will be safe from hazards and ergonomics risk factors, your company's profits will stay with the company instead of being used to pay workers' compensation claims.

When safety is a value, rather than a priority, it's almost unspoken. It is an expectation from management, employees, vendors and the public at large. Safety is built into and becomes part of the corporate fabric, part of the company's DNA.

Ergonomics also must be incorporated and seen as a value. It needs to be built into a corporate culture and be integrated into everything any company does on a daily basis.

While applied ergonomics is a relatively new branch of science — it celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 2009 — it relies on research carried out in many other older, established scientific areas, such as engineering, physiology and psychology.

Ergonomics got its start in the United States during World War II, when scientists designed advanced new systems without fully considering the people who would be using them. It gradually became clear that systems and products would have to be designed to take into account many human and environmental factors if they are to be used safely and effectively. This awareness of people's physical requirements resulted in the discipline of ergonomics. Some of the sciences that comprise ergonomics include biomechanics, engineering, anthropometry, physiology, biology, psychology and sociology.

SAFETY AND ERGONOMICS

Safety and ergonomics are both human factors sciences. Both play an important role in the success of a design or task. They can work synergistically to enhance each other, improving safety and productivity and reducing employer costs.

Private industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported. Wages and salaries averaged $19.41 per hour worked and accounted for 70.8 percent of these costs, while benefits averaged $8 and accounted for the remaining 29.2 percent. Total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour worked in December 2009. Total employer compensation costs for civilian workers, which include private industry and state and local government workers, averaged $29.37 per hour worked in December 2009.

Injuries to the back generate the highest frequency of disabling injuries. A 2005 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) estimated Americans spend $86 billion a year on treating neck and back pain, probably more than any other ailment.

Back pain often is first noticed as ache, soreness, tension and tightness. When a spasm occurs, it can range from moderate to overwhelming pain. Untreated or mistreated, the problem can worsen or persist for months or even years. MSDs are a major problem, so big that OSHA wants separate recording column for MSDs. For the employee, they cause personal suffering and loss of income. For the employer, they reduce business efficiency. For government, they increase social security costs.

Ergonomic disorders are the fastest growing category of work-related illness. According to the most recent statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, they account for 56-63 percent of illnesses reported to OSHA.

Ergonomic-related injuries and illnesses often strike in work environments not associated with large numbers of workplace injuries, like the office environment. For example, if an employee is able to type 40 words per minute, he or she presses 12,000 keys per 8-hour day. Approximately 8 ounces of force is necessary to depress one key. Almost 16 tons of force will be exercised by his or her fingers each day. The fingers of typists whose speed is 60 words per minute exert up to 25 tons of pressure each day.