A study on upper extremity cumulative trauma disorder in different unorganised sectors of West Bengal, India

Cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) is a term used to describe a class of soft tissue injuries that result due to a number of occupational activities. These disorders commonly occur among workers who are engaged in highly repetitive jobs involving continuous hand exertion, vibration and localized mechanical pressure. In the present investigation, an attempt was made to evaluate the prevalence of CTD among workers associated with strenuous hand intensive jobs in unorganized sectors in India and to highlight the unsafe working conditions to which these workers have been exposed for several years. For this purpose, an experiment was performed on 25 male workers from each group. The groups were classified into meat cutters, typists, tailors, visual display terminal (VDT) operators & weavers. For the symptom survey, a questionnaire and checklist method was implemented. Along with these, a detailed time study was performed among the workers during different activities in the total work cycle. For this study a two-tail chi-square test of independence was applied to determine whether or not the feeling of discomfort had any significant association with the repetitiveness of the work. From the observations and analysis of the results, it was revealed that all the activities are repetitive, i.e. over 50% of the work cycle of each activity involved the respective main activity where similar kinds of motion patterns were performed. Therefore it can be concluded that high repetitiveness, prolonged work activity and remaining in static posture for a prolong period of time may be regarded as the causative factors in the occurrence of CTD.