Comparison of ergonomic risk assessment output in four sawmill jobs

The objectives of this study were to examine the agreement between 5 ergonomic risk assessment methods calculated on the basis of quantitative exposure measures and to examine the ability of the methods to correctly classify 4 at risk jobs. Surface electromyography and electrogoniometry were used to record the physical exposures of 87 sawmill workers performing 4 repetitive jobs. Five ergonomic risk assessment tools (rapid upper limb assessment [RULA], rapid entire body assessment [REBA], American conference of governmental industrial hygienist's threshold limit value for mono-task hand work [ACGIH TLV], strain index [SI], and concise exposure index [OCRA]) were calculated. Dichotomization of risk to no risk and at risk resulted in high agreement between methods. Percentage of perfect agreement between methods when 3 levels of risk were considered was moderate and varied by job. Of the methods examined, the RULA and SI were best (correct classification rates of 99 and 97% respectively). The quantitative ACGIH-TLV for mono-task hand work and Borg scale were worst (misclassification rates of 86 and 28% respectively).