Safe Lifting: Identifying and Mitigating Risk

Back injuries caused by lifting heavy loads are common in many industries and are becoming more frequent even among school district workers such as school custodians and cafeteria workers. Occupational Health & Safety magazine addresses this increasingly common issue in a September article titled “What Is a Safe Lift?”

To determine whether it is safe for an individual to lift an object, the article suggests evaluating these situational aspects: 

• Does the object weigh 51 pounds or less?
• Is the object located within 7 inches from the front of the person’s body?
• Is the object at waist height and directly in front of the person?
• Can the object be lifted without any twisting?
• Is there a handle on the object?
• Does the load inside stay in place without shifting once lifted?

If any of the above questions cannot be answered with a “yes” response, the load is considered unsafe. Some basic ways of making a lift safe are decreasing the weight of the load, recruiting a second person to help lift so that the weight is dispersed between two individuals and using mechanical assistance such as a dolly or cart.

Other ways of reducing lifting exposures include the following:

Engineering controls alter the physical state of workstations, tools or equipment to make lifting safer. These can include using carts or lifts rather than manually lifting objects and dividing large loads into several smaller containers.

Administrative controls focus on reducing the amount of time each employee spends lifting heavy objects. One way of accomplishing this would be to cross-train employees so that workers can rotate between jobs that involve exposure to lifting and jobs that are less strenuous. The article also recommends implementing a work hardening program for new hires and employees returning to work following an injury so that they can slowly be conditioned into the job.

Training should be focused on educating workers as well as managers about the potential for back injury and methods for reducing that risk. Training should provide workers with safe lifting techniques and teach them how to recognize and report new risks. When new engineering controls are put in place, training should be provided to keep workers up-to-date with best practices.

Find the complete article with more tips and examples of safe lifting here.