Towards Human Work: Solutions to Problems in Occupational Health and Safety

This text is an edited collection of 60 papers that were presented at the Xth UOEH International Symposium and the 1st Pan-Pacific Conference on Occupational Ergonomics. The main theme of this conference was searching for solutions to occupational problems. The main purpose of the papers on this general topic was to examine the health and safety problems of workers in the industrial workplace from the interdisciplinary perspective of human factors engineering and to find concrete solutions to those problems. A major problem is that ergonomics is not yet a fully mature discipline. Despite its interdisciplinary nature, it often tends to examine current problems only from the point of view of individual specializations. The book presents a search for ergonomics problems related to occupational health and safety in Asia, and it discusses ergonomics problems in several occupational field. In particular, physical work continues to be performed by many people in a variety of settings and will continue to do so in the future. Thus problems related to musculoskeletal injuries will frequently occur. In this regard, actual workloads and possible methods of reducing them are discussed. Studies are included which survey industrial fatigue and stress caused by working under excessively high and low loads (in general, jobs involving repetitive movements or the lifting of heavy objects), and methods for evaluating these problems are presented. As in the case of traditional production-oriented engineering research, papers in this volume show how design and research that consider human factors in work can boost productivity and safety, reduce worker stress, and improve the human aspects of work. This book also discusses the topics that are the focus of many other works in ergonomics: work equipment and the work environment (both physical and organizational). Among the topics covered in this area are protective clothing and its effect on performance, technical standards for equipment and worker safety, efficient maintenance operations, work in low-temperature locations, and work in cleanrooms and air-conditioned environments. Another important topic is the effect of automated production systems on industrial workers; many papers consider the impact that automation has on both the minds and bodies of workers. Other papers provide important clues for the development of a concept of occupational ergonomics. Since ergonomics is a human-centred discipline that deals with the interrelations between individuals or groups and their surroundings, it covers every aspect of the human environment. From this comprehensive point of view, ergonomics studies both the interactions of individuals and the influence of groups and organizations.

Table of Contents:
Ergonomics in perspective; health and safety; posture and musculoskeletal disorders; ergonomics methodology; stress and mental workload; workplace evaluation; environmental ergonomics; VDT ergonomics; process industries; job design.