Health & Safety

Manual handling: not just hands
When you are lifting, stacking or moving things about, you're not just using your hands. You're using all the tools at your disposal; all of the muscles, joints and ligaments in your body.

People with manual handling tasks use these tools every day. But like anything used frequently, these tools - these muscles, joints and ligaments - get taken for granted. That's when accidents happen. In fact, more than a third of all industrial accidents every year are caused by handling loads. Just by lift, reaching, pushing or pulling. Most of these injuries are strains: to the wrist, the thumb and the ankle.

These accidents are often caused by lifting heavy things, twisting around to stack things at the side or over-reaching to get things out of inaccessible places.

Many of these accidents can be prevented. In fact they should be prevented, because employers have a legal duty to: "... so far as is reasonably practical, avoid the need for their employees to undertake any manual handling operations at work which involve a risk to their being injured". It is in the employers' legal interest to make sure that their employees are handling goods and loads safely. It is also in their economic interests. Millions of working hours are lost every year through injury and personal injury cases and compensation packages can prove costly.

Employers could even boost productivity by training their employees to handle loads properly, or by providing materials handling equipment to aid them in the job. Lifting something by hand is hard work; fortunately today's employer has solutions to lighten the load.

Manual handling: lift that load
There are a few simple rules to remember when handling loads:

Keep it close to the body - don't over reach
The further away the load, the more stress on your lower back. Holding a load at arm's length puts five times more weight on your back than holding it close to you. Keeping it close to your chest makes you more stable and the friction of your clothes helps keep the weight where you want it.

Check your feet
Get close to the job; stand square to the load with your leading leg as far forward as comfortable, preferably facing the direction you are going to move next.

Use your legs
If you have to bend down to pick something up, don't stoop - bend the legs and use your strong leg muscles to take the weight. It's not a good idea to handle loads when sitting down - you can't use your leg muscles, you can't use your body weight as a counter balance and you are asking too much of your arms and upper body.

Is it too big?
Make sure that the load is small enough to get a good grip and to see where you are going. If any side of what you are carrying - length, width or height - is more than 75cm then you run a greater chance of injuring yourself. Make sure that you know where the centre of gravity is; keep the heaviest side nearest to your body.

Not too far
If you can lift a load and carry it easily against your body, you will also be able to carry it safely. Don't carry it too far however; more than 10m and you will probably be using all of your energy in carrying the load and have none left to put it down safely.

Don't twist
If you twist you could hurt your back. Lift, carry and place in one direction wherever possible. If you have to put a load in an exact position, put it down first then adjust it when the weight is off you.

Slave to rhythm?
Don't make the same movements too often - it can lead to repetitive strain injury. HSE guidelines allow for lifting or lowering a load once every two minutes. Any more than this and the employer should be carrying out a detailed survey of the risks involved. Take a break now and then, or alternate one handling job with another, to give different muscle groups a rest.

How much weight?
It is difficult to give precise guidelines about how much weight people should be carrying because people vary so much. Weight is only one of the risk factors to manual handlers. A diagram below shows the guideline weights that men and women should be able to carry safely.


Source: HSE Manual Handling Operations Regulations, 1998

These are guideline weights, and their position in relation to the body, that employees should be able to move, lift and load easily and safely.

If the handler's hands enter more than one of the box zones during the operation, then take the figure as the smallest weight shown.

Employers can reduce the risk of injury to their employees by providing materials handling equipment for moving loads. In fact the Health and Safety Executive recommends that employees use machines and tools to take the strain. Investing in equipment will actually help employers meet their legal obligations to protect their workforce from injury, and to keep them safe and fit.

Rather than asking employees to lift and lower items or bending down and reaching up to do a task, get a machine such as a Scissor Lift to bring the items to the correct height.

If extremely heavy items have to be moved, a set of Airskates can do the job efficiently and effortlessly.

If components have to be removed from a container for assembly a Tilt Unit can lift and tilt the container to make the components accessible without over-reaching and consequent operator fatigue.

Simple examples
How employers can reduce the risk of injury to their employees using our Lift 'n' Tilt Unit:

How employers can reduce the risk of injury to their employees using our Vertical Tilt Unit:

Problem:
Moving components from a container to a waist high bench
Risk:
Back strain as employees repeatedly bend down to lift
Solution:
A mobile vertical tilt unit, which brings the container to the work station and raises the components to waist height, enabling the employee to transfer them easily to the bench.