International Ergonomics Association and Liberty Mutual announce their Award in Occupational Safety and Ergonomics

The IEA/Liberty Mutual Medal in Occupational Safety and Ergonomics
The IEA/Liberty Mutual Award in Occupational Safety and Ergonomics was instituted in 1998. The award and a cash prize of US$ 10,000 recognizes outstanding original research leading to the reduction or mitigation of work-related injuries and/or to the advancement of theory, understanding, and development of occupational safety research.

The IEA is inviting applications for the 2008 Liberty Mutual Medal
( Please note, the submission deadline is May 31, 2008 )

Through this prestigious award, the IEA seeks to recognize outstanding original research leading to the reduction or mitigation of work-related injuries. The main criteria include significant advancement of theory and understanding, innovation and development of new directions or approaches. The award recipient will receive a prize of $10,000.

Applicants need not belong to the IEA or any of its constituent groups. Relevant disciplines include ergonomics, epidemiology, biomechanics, cognitive and behavioural psychology, design, physiology, medical sciences, economics, engineering, etc.

Submission Requirements
To be considered for the Liberty Mutual Medal, the applicant must submit a letter of application and a research paper in the domain of accident prevention, injury reduction and/or early return to work, including rehabilitation. The paper must:

be scholarly in nature such as an original paper describing laboratory, field, or intervention research (see Q&A for further elaboration)
contain non-proprietary data
be unpublished at the time of submission (but may have been submitted for publication)
be thirty pages or less, single-spaced using point size 12 with 1 inch margins
The paper should address the following topics:

contributions of the research to theory, i.e., how the work had advanced the understanding of the causes of accidents and/or ability to mitigate occupational injuries or disability
aims of research
originality and creativity
study methodology
implications for risk reduction
The covering letter should highlight:

main innovative aspects of the study (e.g., approach, methodology, analysis, etc.)
anticipated contribution to occupational safety
An international review committee, established by the IEA, will select the winning contribution.

The authors of the winning paper are expected to submit the paper to one of the IEA-endorsed scientific journals (see list on the IEA website, www.iea.cc, section <>). Persons wishing to be considered for the 2008 prize should submit an application, including a separate covering letter and paper, both in electronic format, to the IEA Awards Committee Chair at the following address:

Prof. Pierre Falzon
CNAM
Laboratoire d'Ergonomie
41 Rue Gay Lussac
75005 Paris
France

Tel: +33 (1) 44-10-78-02
Fax: +33 (1) 44-10-79-34
E-mail: falzon@cnam.fr



The deadline for receipt of applications is May 31, 2008. Applicants will be notified of the results by mid-July. Announcement of the award winner will be made public on August 31, 2008.


If you require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact the IEA Awards Committee Chair

AFL-CIO Report: Workplaces Not as Safe as OSHA Claims

By Katherine Torres

While OSHA has stated that workplaces are safer than ever and that fatality, injury and illness rates are on the decline, a new AFL-CIO report contradicts these claims, suggesting that workplaces may not be as safe as the agency professes.
AFL-CIO’s 2008 Death on the Job report, which was released in anticipation of the 20th annual Workers Memorial Day on April 28, points out that the latest figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revealed that there were 5,840 workplace deaths due to traumatic injuries in 2006, an increase of 106 over the 5,734 deaths reported in 2005. These numbers reflect the final BLS fatality data and are higher than the preliminary numbers released in August 2007.


On an average day, 153 workers lose their lives as a result of workplace injuries and disease, and another 11,233 are injured, the report read. AFL-CIO emphasized that these figures are telling of the weaknesses in the country's workplace safety laws and penalties. OSHA's lack of sufficient resources, the report said, fails to protect workers adequately as few inspectors and low penalties make the threat of an OSHA inspection hollow for many employers.

According to the report, there are 2,094 OSHA inspectors (821 federal and 1,273 state inspectors) for the approximately 130 million U.S. workers. At this rate, federal OSHA inspectors are only able to inspect workplaces, on average, once every 133 years, and state OSHA inspectors on average once every 65 years, the report stated.

In addition, the report concluded that in FY 2007, the average OSHA penalty for employers who allowed "conditions creating a substantial probability of death or serious physical harm to workers" was $909. It also found that the average national total penalty in fatality investigations was $10,133.

"Our nation's system of rules and enforcement has fallen embarrassingly short of its goal of ensuring workplace safety," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "America's workers simply can't afford four more years of Bush administration-style cuts, rollbacks and opposition to new safety protections.”

Nurse Laments Lack of Safety Protections
Rebecca Rhoades, a nurse from Cedar Rapids, Mich., is an example of a worker affected by this apparent dearth of safety protections. Rhoades hurt her back several times while lifting patients at the hospital where she worked. After her first injury, she said OSHA did not ensure her future safety either by requiring the hospital to offer lifts or mandating training in safe patient handling.

When Rhoades hurt her back a second time and reported the injury to the hospital, they placed her under working restrictions for only 6 weeks. She was then ordered to assume her original duties, which continued to weaken her back.

Despite back surgery, Rhoades became disabled and, as a result, was unable to return to work. Today, she is an activist working to support and create safe workplaces for nurses across the country. She reflects on her experience and wonders why she didn't receive more assistance from the hospital.

“There was no reason they couldn’t have helped me. I was a dedicated nurse and got raving reviews,” she said. “It’s getting more and more difficult for workers to have the kind of safety protections that would seem like common sense.”

To access the report, which offers an in-depth analysis on workplace safety, please visit http://www.aflcio.org/issues/safety/memorial.

Ergonomics Risk Assessment: Determining When, Why, Who and How You Should Perform One

By David M. Brodie

In Part I of this two-part series, the author examines why and when ergonomics risk assessments should be performed.
As ergonomics increasingly becomes a core component of safety programs around the country, the methods used to evaluate and define the ergonomics risk present in a job develop into a critical element of the ergonomics process. When a company begins to look at ergonomics and how to implement an effective process, the basic job analysis is often the starting point, and the point that defines how a company will approach the analysis and abatement of ergonomics risk.

Identification of ergonomics stressors that are linked with the development of musculoskeletal disorders is a key element of any ergonomics activity. In most cases, stressors successfully can be identified using observational and checklist-driven techniques. The detection of ergonomics risk does not require advanced tools or techniques.


This observational approach often the most efficient method of gathering data on the stressors in the working environment, but the density of this data is limited. There is no measure of exposure, risk or any data that will provide a quantitative measure that can be tracked (i.e. improvement of process). The positive characteristics of this type of stressor identification process are the ease in which it is performed, the low cost of the assessment and quick turnaround times. A simple observation approach often can be used to feed a quick fix of an obvious ergonomics stressor. As the situation becomes more complicated, intricate or costly, the need for a more sophisticated approach may present itself.

When a company is interested in advancing its ergonomics job analysis process, the next level of assessment involves the use of risk assessment tools. Now, the term “tool” is used lightly, in that ergonomics risk assessment methods largely are paper-based, with some methods computerized for ease of use. There seldom are complicated pieces of equipment involved, except for a force gauge in some situations. Prior to using an ergonomics risk assessment tool, a company should ask four simple questions:

Why should we use an ergonomics risk assessment tool?
Who will be performing the assessments?
How do we use the risk assessment tool correctly?
When should we use a specific ergonomics risk assessment tool?
This paper will walk through these four questions to provide a guide to adding ergonomics risk assessments to a safety or ergonomics program.

Why and When Should You Perform an Ergonomics Risk Assessment?

Where ergonomics is concerned, there are often three questions asked:

Which jobs pose the greatest risk?
How much is too much?
How can I show improvements were made?
One of the first steps in ergonomics evaluations is to identify the stressors present in the jobs. This identification usually is accomplished with a subjective evaluation. The evaluator may identify such things as high repetition, high force and/or extreme posture as being present in a job without any measurements. While this type of evaluation may be effective for determining which jobs may need further investigation, the severity of the identified stressors often is difficult to express and/or document. Furthermore, it is difficult to compare different jobs or tasks within a job to determine a prioritization of ergonomics efforts. This leads to the question: “Which jobs pose the greatest risk?”

Ergonomic interventions may not completely eliminate the stressors. They may be reduced but still be present. Additionally, as long as humans are involved in the workplace, there will be ergonomic stressors placed on those individuals. Therein lays the question: “How much is too much?”

Some interventions may address a stressor identified in the original evaluation and create another stressor. Therefore, once interventions are in place they should be evaluated to ensure they eliminated or reduced the stressors identified in the original evaluation without creating another hazard. This begs the question: “How can improvements be shown and evaluated?”

Some answers to these questions may be found through the use of ergonomics risk assessment tools. The use of quantitative or semi-quantitative evaluation tools provides the evaluator with numeric output with which they may evaluate the risk for the development of MSDs for a given job. This output also may allow them to compare relative risk of multiple jobs or tasks, thereby identifying the jobs or tasks that pose the greatest risk. This may assist the evaluator in the prioritization of ergonomics efforts.

These tools also may provide the evaluator or designer with recommended limits to the stressors present in a job, task or job design. These limits may be used to assist in reducing the risk to safe levels. Furthermore, the results may be used to compare the same job or task before and after an intervention is put in place.

Part II of this series, “Ergonomics Risk Assessment: Determining When, Why, Who, and How You Should Perform One,” will appear in the May newsletter.

Contributing Editor David Brodie, MS, CPE, (dbrodie@atlasergo.com) is director of ergonomics services for Atlas Ergonomics. Atlas Ergonomics, LLC is a leading ergonomic service and technology provider, helping customers reduce the spiraling costs of work related injuries within industrial, office, and commercial driver environments. Atlas Ergonomics provides turnkey support through a nationwide network of providers or can assist corporate resources with the necessary training and technology. Atlas Ergonomics is located in Grand Haven, Mich., and additional information can be found at http://www.atlasergo.com.

Culture, Leadership Critical to Reducing Workplace Injuries

April 14, 2008

By Katherine Torres

A behavioral safety expert, who testified during the April 1 Senate Employment and Workplace Protections Subcommittee hearing on the dangerous patterns of workplace safety violations, spoke to OccupationalHazards.com and emphasized that organizational leaders can drive company culture to make workplace safety a priority.
Carmen Bianco, an executive consultant with Behavioral Safety Technology (BST), asserted that company leaders significantly can influence the effectiveness of injury reduction programs through the cultures they create. If the culture only focuses on productivity, for example, there isn’t much room for safety, Bianco said. But when companies successfully communicate that productivity cannot exist without safety, they can better reduce on-the-job injuries.

“[Company leaders] communicate their message through the things they focus on, setting the right vision, challenging and inspiring the workforce,” he said. “They really get around and embrace that vision, to build the team and collaborative environment where everyone's voice is heard.”

These leaders, he added, are “building a culture in which they value every employee and what they bring to the table.”


Bianco was hesitant to presume that the companies named during the April 1 hearing – BP, McWane and Cintas, for example – were at fault because the company CEO or other organizational leaders were not effectively communicating a culture of safety throughout the company. Without conducting an assessment of these specific companies, he said, “it's difficult to tell what has been going on there.”

Initiating Safety Culture
According to Bianco, studies of more than 150 sites in North America show that companies reduce injuries more effectively with comprehensive employee-engagement approaches than with traditional safety programs alone. Companies in the study group achieved an average 25 percent reduction in injury rates after the first year, increasing to an average 65 percent improvement after five years, he said.

In Bianco’s experience, he said some companies are willing to place safety at the highest priority, but are uncertain how to do so or how to make the corporate culture fully supportive of safety.

He added that in many of the companies he has worked with, company leadership may drive the culture of safety in the right direction, but certain subcultures within the same organization are weak in communicating the message.

The Effect of Fragmented Departments
As an example, Bianco set up the following scenario: Company A, an organization of 1,000 people, has a standard leadership team comprised of a CEO and various departmental leaders. BST completes an assessment and determines that the corporate level is supportive of safety. But when examining each of the company's departments, the analysis finds that some leaders haven’t earned the trust of their workers, are controlling or don't appear to respect others' opinions.

“So you now have work group that is fragmented,” he said. “They aren't working together, they aren't bringing good or bad news to the boss, and are not reporting injuries because they are scared to.”

In the same company, but in a different department, organizational leaders are determined to be aware of all the department’s happenings and ensure that when decisions are made, everyone's input is taken into consideration. This leader also wants to know what it takes to make the job as safe as possible, Bianco said.

“It's not unusual to go into a company and within different departments see different needs,” he said. “But it's a really a factor of how different leaders lead.”

To fix the problem, Bianco explained it's important for the department with the fragmented work group to go through a rebuilding process. The department leader also must learn how to lead differently and understand that the “heavy command and control” negatively impacts his work group.

“Addressing leadership and culture is an important addition to training, audits and policies,” he said. “This does not substitute traditional programs, which are important for safety excellence, but alone are not sufficient to give organizations excellence and continuous improvement.”

For more information about the Senate Employment and Workplace Protections Subcommittee hearing, read Tougher Penalties, Worker Safety Laws Discussed at Senate Hearing.

Ergonomics is an important aspect of therapy

April 8
DIANE COSTULAS Special to The Times Leader


DALLAS — Today’s society is being dominated by two divergent issues: An aging population and a fast-moving world. The competing interests often require the expertise of occupational therapists who help people in their homes and workplaces improve and maintain their ability to perform daily tasks.



Misericordia University occupational therapy student Diane Costulas, left, OT professor Dr. Gwen Bartolacci and OT student Erin Moravec watch Dolly Yunkunis try out a reacher at the Kingston Senior Center. Occupational therapists help people avoid or adapt to limitations caused by injury or medical conditions.

Fred Adams /The times Leader



Times Leader Photo Store
April is National Occupational Therapy Month. During the next four weeks, graduate students in Misericordia University’s Occupational Therapy Department will examine issues and situations that professionally licensed OTs tackle every day in their practices.

An important aspect of occupational therapy is helping people get the most out of their everyday lives. One method OTs use is ergonomics, or the science of designing a patient’s environment to help them reach their highest level of function. It can be as simple as adjusting a person’s posture while they perform daily work or as complex as making modifications to an entire workplace.

“By using the principles of ergonomics, work productivity and efficiency can improve,” Misericordia University graduate OT student Erin Moravec said. “Injuries can also be prevented and people with pre-existing injuries or chronic medical conditions are provided with equal work opportunities.”

Moravec has provided therapy for children with cerebral palsy during a Misericordia service trip to Romania and has honed her clinical skills with adult patients during a rotation at St. Joseph’s Twin Tier Rehabilitation Center in Elmira, N.Y. Her training and experience as an occupational therapy student offer a glimpse into the many applications and benefits of the profession.

For example, OTs can work with employers and companies to develop ergonomic guidelines. They can assess an environment and make recommendations to the employer as well as provide on-site job training to ensure proper ergonomics is achieved.

OTs can ensure proper ergonomics by evaluating the workplace and providing recommendations, and an ergonomic risk analysis checklist. They can give onsite job training and educate employers and employees about potential job-related injuries and the appropriate prevention methods.

Employers, with the assistance of OTs, can design pre-hire screenings for particular jobs that will help reduce the risk of a workplace injury, and create an essential functions document that specifically targets certain jobs. An OT also can determine reasonable accommodations that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and provide or recommend tools and devices that prevent injury.

“Just as occupational therapists help people adapt to their environment after an injury, they can also help prevent serious injuries at work or in the home by carefully analyzing it,” said Misericordia University associate professor and Occupational Therapy Department chairwoman Grace Fisher, Ed.D., O.T.R./L.. “For example, we developed the Cougar Home Safety Assessment program at Misericordia that assesses senior citizens’ homes for environmental safety hazards. The whole idea behind the program is to prevent unnecessary accidents and injuries.”

Ergonomics in the home and workplace can make watching television more comfortable or help employees be more productive, Moravec explains. The changes can be as simple as adding a lumbar support to office chairs and providing diagrams to illustrate proper seating mechanics so workers do not develop sore backs or chronic back conditions.

“By using the principles of ergonomics, work

productivity and efficiency can improve.”

Erin Moravec

Misericordia University graduate OT student

Diane Costulas is a graduate of occupational therapy student at Misericordia University. For more information about the Misericordia program, log on to www.misericordia.edu/ot or call 674-6481.

OSHA Alliance in Massachusetts Aims to Save Hearing

April 10, 2008
Reducing noise hazards for employees in central and western Massachusetts is the goal of a new alliance among OSHA's Springfield Area Office, American Safety and Supply Inc. of Springfield, and Industrial Hearing Testing of Auburn, Mass.

"Continual exposure to high noise levels can lead to hearing loss," said Mary Hoye, OSHA's area director in Springfield. "The key to preventing hearing loss is in knowing how to identify, address, and minimize workplace noise hazards, be that workplace a factory, construction site, or other venue."

Under the alliance, OSHA, ASSI, and IHT will work jointly to develop and deliver training and education programs, educational materials, and resources to the region's employers that will focus on noise-related safety and health issues, and preventing hearing loss in both construction and general industry workplaces. The first training session is expected to be held later this spring. The alliance, announced yesterday, was signed at IHS headquarters in Auburn by Hoye, ASSI President Chris Caron, and IHT President Scott Hengen. Central and western Massachusetts employers and others seeking more information about this or other OSHA alliances in the area should contact the compliance assistance specialist in OSHA's Springfield Area Office at 413-785-0123.

"This unique partnership seeks to take a comprehensive and effective approach to reducing noise hazards in the region's workplaces by equipping employers and employees with the knowledge and ability to prevent hearing losses in the first place," said Hoye.

Eastern Ergonomics Conference, June 24 In New York City; New One-Day Format, Focus On Core Ergonomics Education

4/4/2008
New York, NY - Ergonomics, facilities, HR, occupational health, and safety professionals are already registering for the 7th Annual Eastern Ergonomics Conference (EEC), June 24, 2008 at the American Conference Center, New York City.

Continental Exhibitions, Inc., owners/producers of the EEC, is providing a new one-day conference format in response to extensive research with industry leaders and EEC alumni. The new format, which provides a core ergonomics education, allows those new to their organization's ergonomics and safety programs to quickly get up to speed by gaining a firm understanding of ergonomics concepts and strategies. The educational opportunities offered will help any organization use ergonomics to improve productivity, reduce workplace injuries and associated costs, and grow the bottom line.

Topics addressed will include: the basics of building an ergonomics program, safe material handling guidelines, best practices for a safer and more productive aging workforce, managing workers' comp costs, risk assessment, and construction safety. Immediately following the conference breakfast, Cindy Roth, CEO, Ergonomic Technologies Corporation (ETC), will deliver the opening presentation: The Business Case for Ergonomics is Stronger than Ever. ETC's work represents a wide range of industries including energy, manufacturing, transportation, and technology; their clients include Aventis, GM, Hallmark, Panasonic, Stanley Tools, and many others.

The all-inclusive registration allows attendees to select from 12 sessions in three tracks: program management, office ergonomics, and industrial & construction ergonomics. Attendees will also take part in the opening presentation, breakfast, and lunch, which is sponsored by AliMed. Those that register by June 10 save $100, and all EEC attendees receive a $50 discount on registration for the 14th Annual National Ergonomics Conference and Exposition (NECE) in Las Vegas, Dec. 2 - 5, 2008 where they can build on the basics learned at the EEC. The NECE is the largest ergonomics event in the U.S. with 80+ educational opportunities, and thousands of products on display at the Expo, which includes 3M, Ansell, Fellowes, Herman Miller, Power Pusher by NuStar, Steelcase, Thermo Fischer Scientific, and others.

For more information including the Conference schedule, session descriptions, speaker bios, and registration form visit www.ErgoExpo.com or email information@ergoexpo.com. Please note that seating for the EEC is limited.

SOURCE: Continental Exhibitions, Inc.