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Thursday, August 7, 2014

NIOSH Resource Helps Assess Ergonomic, MSDs Risks

A new resource from NIOSH and the Canadian Centre of Research Expertise for the Prevention of Musculoskeletal Disorders aims to help practitioners assess working posture for the prevention and control of occupational musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The report, "Observation-Based Posture Assessment: Review of Current Practice and Recommendations for Improvement," provides an observational approach to improve risk analysis for MSDs prevention by assessing postural stress of the trunk and upper limbs.

According to NIOSH, its approach is supported by recent research that evaluated how much time it takes observers to classify specific postures and how often observers are likely to make posture classification errors. It also provides additional guidelines for the video recording of posture and for the posture analysis process.