Variability in Risk Factors for Knee Injury in Construction

Details

• Personal Author:
  Buchholz B ; Paquet V ; Punnett, Laura ; Tak S ; Woskie S
• Description:
  This study investigated sources of variance in exposure to risk factors for knee pain in a variety of highway construction trades, operations, and tasks. Over 15,000 discrete observations of leg postures and weights handled were made on 120 construction workers in five construction trades, in nine operations over 79 days. The contributions of trade, operation, task, and worker to the variability in work time spent kneeling, squatting, and carrying loads were evaluated with multilevel random effects models. Construction operation and task explained about 20% to 30% of total variation in kneeling, squatting, and carrying loads. There was a large unexplained component of variance thought to represent day-to-day variability of exposure within task. Reliable assessments of knee exposures require multiple days to accommodate the high variability of exposures among operations and tasks and over time. These sources of variability should be carefully considered in efforts to estimate exposures to knee loading for epidemiologic or intervention studies. Homogenous exposure groups are not easily defined from the readily available organizational features of construction work. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Construction Industry Musculoskeletal System Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Kneeling Construction Construction-industry Construction-workers Manual Material Handling Musculoskeletal-system Occupational-exposure Occupational-hazards Posture Random Effect Models Squatting Statistical-analysis Surveillance-programs Time-weighted-average-exposure Variance Ratio Work-analysis Work-areas Work-environment Work-practices Workplace-studies

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• ISSN:
  1545-9624
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement ; Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  District of Columbia ; Massachusetts ; New York ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 1 ; OSHA Region 2 ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  113-120
• Volume:
  6
• Issue:
  2
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20035019
• Citation:
  J Occup Environ Hyg 2009 Feb; 6(2):113-120
• Contact Point Address:
  SangWoo Tak, NIOSH, Division of Surveillance Hazard Evaluation & Field Studies, 4676 Columbia Parkway, R-17, Cincinnati, OH 45226
• Email:
  stak@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2009
• NORA Priority Area:
  Disease and Injury: Musculoskeletal Disorders of the Upper Extremities
• Performing Organization:
  Center to Protect Workers' Rights
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  19920930
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• End Date:
  19950929
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:5a7174cf1ad2ccc8985120e855542f1e1633b6cc11d9d92ccb5ed90028c46c413aaac7553473abd5087b1818c89bb2311a4ec8f0e9f236638213a15a0eefa8da
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/187015/cdc_187015_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 270.26 KB ]