Implications of the Revised NIOSH Lifting Guide of 1991: A Field Study

Abstract

In 1981, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published the Work Practices Guide for Manual Lifting with the goal of reducing injury from manual lifting in the workplace. The 1981 Guide established the 1981 Lifting Equation to give industry an empirical means of evaluating the risk to a worker associated with manual lifting tasks. In 1991, NIOSH revised the guide and updated the lifting equation to reflect the latest findings in the area of manual lifting. The 1991 Lifting Equation has several significant differences from the 1981 Lifting Equation. Among these are the ability to evaluate non-symmetrical lifting tasks and consideration of the hand-to- container coupling. This field study analyzed 31 manual lifting tasks from three industrial sites in order to assess the impact the 1991 Lifting Equation may have on industry. The data from this study indicates that the 1991 Lifting Equation products a more conservative estimate of the maximum capacity of a worker for manual lifting. Ten of the 31 lift were asymmetrical, allowing the 1991 Lifting Equation to evaluate 47.6 percent more lift than could the 1981 Lifting Equation.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1992
Accession Number
ADA267036

Entities

People

  • Nina L. Brokaw

Organizations

  • University of Louisville

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Back Injuries
  • Cardboard Boxes
  • Containers
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Industrial Engineering
  • Measurement
  • Medical Personnel
  • Occupational Safety And Health
  • Packing Materials
  • Pain
  • Plastic Explosives
  • Spinal Column
  • Spine
  • Students
  • Training
  • United States

Readers

  • Aerodynamics/Aeronautics.
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Instructional Design and Training Evaluation.