Human Factors

More than a decade of research has been spent on of research in injury prevention and improved productivity in agriculture, meat processing, wood processing, forestry, construction and manufacturing. This series of reports summarises that research.
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    Hazard Profiles and Solutions: A summary of evaluation of the forestry sector 'Mini-HaPS cards Chainsaw related injuries

    Sophie Hide and Dave Moore
    A thousand sets of ‘Hazard Profiles and Solutions’(HaPS) cards were distributed by FITEC and FICA.. Each set comprised five passport sized cards, containing summary information (hazards and avoidance action) on a particular felling or forestry activity.
    [109.8 KB] (pdf).
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    Factors contributing to injury

    Liz Ashby and Richard Parker
    A series of case study interviews with loggers were conducted to explore the factors associated with a specific injury event, aiming to determine the extent to which more than one factor contributed to the injury event and the types of factors contributing to injury events.
    [124.2 KB] (pdf).
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    Dehydration review of research and literature

    Liz Ashby and Richard Parker
    Dehydration is an issue in forestry, the majority of affected workers are under-hydrated rather than clinically dehydrated. Practical interventions are indicated including drink supplies and well designed water bottles and backpacks, which need to be appropriate for the tasks and individuals.
    [495.1 KB] (pdf).
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    Felling Injuries

    Liz Ashby, Tim Bentley and Richard Parker
    Logging Accident Reporting Scheme (ARS) data for injuries sustained during felling operations were analysed. A detailed breakdown of the felling task was performed and hazards associated with each task component were considered.
    [1.6 MB] (pdf).
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    Dehydration in Loggers - A Pilot Study

    Richard Parker, Liz Ashby and Graham Bates
    This pilot study investigated the extent of dehydration in six logging crews by measuring the specific gravity of urine. Thirty one loggers provided a urine sample and information on their fluid intake for that day.
    [1.2 MB] (pdf).
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    Understanding and Preventing Slip, Trip and Fall Injuries in the New Zealand Logging Industry

    Tim Bentley, Richard Parker and Liz Ashby
    318 Slip, Trip and Fall (STF) injuries (minor and lost-time) were reported to the logging ARS during the period January 1996-June 2001. STF injuries represented 16.5% of logging injuries during this period, and resulted in 1288 lost work days. Inexperienced loggers and skid workers were over-represented in STF injuries.
    [337.7 KB] (pdf).
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    Survey of Health and Wellbeing of Workers in the NZ Forestry Industry

    Louisa Thomas, Tim Bentley and Liz Ashmore
    A sample of forest employees from nine regions in New Zealand were interviewed by OSH. A large proportion had been with their crew for less than six months, raising concerns for safety culture and skills retention. Employees worked long hours and fatigue was reported.
    [1.2 MB] (pdf).
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    Musculoskeletal Disorders in Silviculture and Logging 1995-1999

    Liz Ashby, Tim Bentley and Richard Parker
    Over a five-year period (1995-1999) strains and sprains accounted for approximately one-third of injuries reported. Injuries to the lower back accounted for 34% of logging strains and sprains, with slips, trips and falls being the most frequent injury mechanism (39%). Injuries were most commonly associated with skid work.
    [370.3 KB] (pdf).
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    Seasonal Dehydration

    Richard Parker, Liz Ashby and Graham Bates
    Over one winter and one summer, a total of 24 loggers provided urine samples three times a day for four consecutive days. Most loggers were insufficiently hydrated, and some were dehydrated. There were no significant differences between winter and summer values.
    [261.4 KB] (pdf).
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    Near Miss Report 1995-1999

    Tony Evanson, Tim Bentley, Richard Parker, Liz Ashby and David Tappin
    Near-miss data provide a useful source of information about workplace events that have the potential to produce injury. This report summarises New Zealand forest industry reported near-miss incident (RNMI) data for the felling, trimming, hauling, skidwork and machine operation phases of the logging operation.
    [1.7 MB] (pdf).
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    Skid Work Injuries 1995-1999

    Richard Parker and Tim Bentley
    This report summarises skid site injury information supplied to the Logging Accident Reporting Scheme (ARS) from January 1995 to December 1999. The database is maintained by the Centre for Occupational Human Factors and Ergonomics (COHFE).
    [2.2 MB] (pdf).
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    Safety Training for New Zealand Loggers

    Judith Brook and Richard Brook
    This study was carried out over a three year period to identify and examine safety-related training in the logging industry, and to provide recommendations on how such training might be improved.
    [1015.2 KB] (pdf).
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    Chainsaw Related Injuries

    Richard Parker and Liz Ashby
    This report details findings from an analysis of the New Zealand Accident Reporting Scheme data for logging injuries for three-year period Jan 2001 to Dec 2003. The injury rate for inexperienced chainsaw users was greater than that for more experienced users.
    [402.6 KB] (pdf).
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    An analysis of ACC data for the New Zealand Timber Processing Industry

    Liz Ashby and David Tappin
    For the two year period for the two-year period, 1 Jan 2005 to 31 December 2006 over 11,000 timber processing industry ACC claims were analysed. Around 43% of all claims were musculoskeletal disorders (73% of the soft tissue injuries were musculoskeletal disorders injury types).
    [239.6 KB] (pdf).
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    Addressing MSD in sawmilling

    David Tappin, Marion Edwin and Tim Bentley
    In 2001 we began researching musculoskeletal disorders in sawmills with the aims of: determining the prevalence of musculoskeletal problems amongst sawmill workers, identifying high-risk sawmill tasks, and designing measures to prevent or alleviate musculoskeletal problems.
    [1.5 MB] (pdf).
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    MSD in sawmilling Case Study 1 - optimising working heights

    David Tappin and Dave Moore
    Changes were made to make manual handling easier at the mill; most notably, overall packet heights were lowered and friction reduced for timber handlers at the green table. There were unexpected benefits.
    [381.1 KB] (pdf).
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    MSD in sawmilling Case Study 2 - using rolling packet risers

    David Tappin and Dave Moore
    To maximise quality and throughput, a Hawkes Bay remanufacturing plant installed rolling packet risers (known locally as springers). These have assisted in achieving a high standard of quality control and also reduced both the manual handling demands and the downtime between packets.
    [258.3 KB] (pdf).
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    Timber processing - analysis of ACC claims narratives

    Liz Ashby and David Tappin
    This report outlines key findings following analysis of the accident description data from all accepted ACC claims from the timber processing industry from Jan 2005 to Dec 2006.
    [225.2 KB] (pdf).
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    Injury Prevention in Timber Processing: A brief review of the literature for the New Zealand imber processing industry

    Liz Ashby, David Tappin, Dave Moore.
    They key types of injury prevention in NZ sawmilling cover workspace design and geometry; organisational factors and workflow; reduction of forces and handling loads; positive safety climate or culture.
    [241.7 KB] (pdf).
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    Sawmill Accident Register Survey

    David Tappin, Marion Edwin and Dave Moore
    Twelve months of Accident Register Records from 37 mills were collected and analysed to get broad indicators of problematic tasks within the industry. Timber handling activities associated with tables, filleting, and sawyers were highlighted for more detailed studies. This report outlines the steps involved in this survey and summarises the main findings from it.
    [439.1 KB] (pdf).
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    Sawmill injury database - pilot

    David Tappin, Liz Ashby, Richard Parker and Dave Moore
    This report briefly outlines the development and piloting of an injury database for sawmilling.
    [198.8 KB] (pdf).
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    Avoiding MSD Injuries in Filleting

    David Tappin, Dave Moore and Liz Ashby
    Filleting rated as one of the most likely ways to incur musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), (also referred to as strains and sprains), in a 2001 COHFE survey of 12 months records from the Accident Registers of 37 sawmills around New Zealand.
    [605.0 KB] (pdf).
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    Reducing quadbike incidents in New Zealand - investigating interventions

    Dave Moore and David Tappin
    OSH and of the Department of Labour identified quadbikes as the most common single factor in traumatic deaths on NZ farms, and quadbike use as their single greatest area of concern in farm safety.
    [1.6 MB] (pdf).
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    Slips, Trips and Falls in the Dairy Farming Sector

    Dave Moore, David Tappin, Liz Ashby and Richard Parker and Tim Bentley
    Slips, trips and falls (STF) on New Zealand dairy farms cost ACC $1.2 million a year. The full costs to farmers will be between three to twelve times that amount.
    [383.7 KB] (pdf).
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    Mobile Machine Ergonomics

    Liz Ashby and Richard Parker
    Around a quarter of agricultural tractor injuries and a third of forestry machine injuries result from slips, trips and falls from machines.
    [527.5 KB] (pdf).
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    Light Trailers and trailed implements

    Dave Moore
    We estimate that around 80% - 90% of NZ farms use light trailers and/or trailed light implements. Also, that these are contributing factors in around 20% of quadbike Loss of Control Events leading to injury, of which there are roughly 1000 reported to ACC each year.
    [882.1 KB] (pdf).
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    Farm Tractors - Whole Body Vibration

    Liz Ashby and Richard Parker
    Exposure to whole body vibration is strongly associated with back disorders with those exposed demonstrating higher prevalence of back pain than those not exposed. The effects of vibration are likely to be most significant when in combination with other factors associated with musculoskeletal conditions.
    [169.9 KB] (pdf).
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    Industry Interventions for Addressing Muculoskeletal Disorders (Strains/Sprains) in New Zealand Meat Processing

    D. Tappin, D. Moore, T. Bentley, R. Parker, L. Ashby, A. Vitalis, D. Riley, S. Hide
    Between 2004-2006 COHFE and Massey University conducted a study within the meat and seafood processing industries to find out about interventions that were being used, or could be used in the future, to prevent musculoskeletal disorders (MSD – also often referred to as sprain and strain injuries).
    [989.7 KB] (pdf).
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    Industry Interventions for Addressing Musculoskeletal Disorders (Strains/Sprains) in New Zealand Seafood Processing

    D. Tappin, D. Moore, T. Bentley, R. Parker, L. Ashby, A. Vitalis
    Between 2004-2006 COHFE and Massey University conducted a study within the meat and seafood processing industries to find out about interventions that were being used, or could be used in the future, to prevent musculoskeletal disorders.
    [798.4 KB] (pdf).
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    MSD In seafood processing: a review of the literature for the NZ seafood processing industry

    Moore, D., Tappin, D., Ashby, L.
    The aims of this literature review on musculoskeletal disorders in seafood processing were to establish the current state of knowledge regarding risk factors, interventions, and barriers to their implementation.
    [729.9 KB] (pdf).
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    MSD in meat processing: a review of the literature for the NZ meat processing industry

    Tappin, D., Moore, D., Ashby, L., Riley, D., Bentley, T. & Trevelyan, F
    The aims of this literature review on musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in meat processing were to establish the current state of knowledge regarding risk factors, interventions, and barriers to their implementation.
    [910.8 KB] (pdf).
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    Musculoskeletal disorders in the meat processing industry: summary of results from stage 1

    David Tappin and Liz Ashby, Tim Bentley and Tony Vitalis
    The main aim of this study is to reduce musculoskeletal disease in the meat processing industry. ACC figures (2002/03) show that the musculoskeletal disease incidence rate for meat processing was more than twice the rate for the next highest industry.
    [246.5 KB] (pdf).
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    Slips, Trips and Falls in the NZ Residential Construction Sector - Full Report

    Dr Sophie Hide, Dr Tim Bentley*, Professor Stephen Legg, David Tappin and David Moore, Richard Parker and Liz Ashby
    Slips trips and falls (STF) are a major cause of fatalities and injuries in the construction industry internationally. This report presents findings from the final stage (phase 2) of a three-phase research project into the prevention of STF in the residential construction sector, and is concerned with the development of intervention measures.
    Published Online - Sep 2004. [872.3 KB] (pdf).
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    MSD in the Seafood Processing Industry: summary of results from stage 1

    David Tappin and Liz Ashby, Tim Bentley and Tony Vitalis
    Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD) are the most common type of non-fatal occupational injury and lost-time in New Zealand workplaces (ACC) and have been identified as having high incidence in seafood processing. ACC figures show that MSD compensation claims for seafood processing cost over $1.3m in each of the last two years.
    [244.4 KB] (pdf).
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    Exploring incident causation and intervention needs for forest industry logging

    Sophie Hide, Liz Ashby, Richard Parker & Brenda Baillie
    By systematically analysing 15 sample logging incidents a range of adverse underlying organisational factors were identified. Data were collected through fieldwork and interviews with injured workers, those in supervisory positions and with forest sector industry experts. Findings from all sources were collated to establish common areas of concern. Areas for future initiatives are proposed.
    [494.5 KB] (pdf).
35 documents, showing 1 to 35 Show page: 1
Scion Connections Issue 7Issue 7, March 2013