Obtaining ergonomics information about industrial injuries: A five-year analysis

An injury report from designed for use in a large strip and sheet steel processing plant incorporated check lists intended to yield detailed ergonomics data. Analyses of almost 10 000 injuries reported upon over five consecutive years are the subject of this report. It is clear that the injury rate was almost halved over the five years. A number of other relationships are revealed by the data, notably the frequency of injury according to: day of week; hour of day; and time between the employee's last work break and the occurrence of injury. It is concluded that the categorical approach to reporting utilised in this study is of real value and suggestions are made for its more widespread application.