MARKET REPORT LIFTING & SHIFTING
Manual handling tasks are common in many industries.
Get a grip on safety
Manual handling tasks are necessary in many industries and hirers are well-placed to supply the equipment that will help employers meet their Health & Safety obligations.
Incorrect manual handling is one of the most common causes of injury at work. It causes work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) which account for over a third of all workplace injuries. The most recent statistics available from the Health & Safety Executive’s (HSE) Labour Force Survey for 2016 show that, in Great Britain, the total number of such MSDs was 539,000 out of a total of 1,311,000 for all work-related illnesses. This equates to 41% or an incidence rate of 550 cases per 100,000 people and, while this is not significantly different from the previous year’s figures, and the HSE says the rate has been broadly flat for the last five years, it shows the scale of problems related to lifting and shifting tasks. Indeed, the HSE estimates that 8.8 million working days were lost due as a result of these injuries, with an average of 16 days lost for each case, or 34% of all working days lost due to work-related ill health.
The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, as amended in 2002, apply to a wide range of activities, including lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling or carrying. Not surprisingly, the construction industry is one of the sectors that has been identified as having significantly higher rates of MSDs when compared with those of all activities taken as a whole.
reduce the risk of injury from hazardous manual handling, so far as is reasonably practicable. A risk assessment will need to be undertaken, and managers need to consider what activities might cause harm to people and decide whether enough is being done to prevent injury.
Hirers ideally placed The HSE website gives guidance on manual handling regulations.
As with so many other areas of workplace Health & Safety, hirers are ideally placed to provide information and equipment to help employers to comply with the regulations. The HSE’s leaflet ‘Making the best use of lifting and handling aids’, INDG398(rev1), provides a useful overview of the types of products that are available to can provide mechanical assistance with handling tasks across a range of industries and working environments. It points out, for example, that a hoist, either powered or hand-operated, can support the weight of a load and leave the handler free to control its position. Similarly, a trolley, sack truck or roller conveyor can greatly reduce the effort required to move a load horizontally.
However, manual handling injuries can obviously happen anywhere people are at work, from factories, offices and warehouses, to hospitals, banks and laboratories, as well as while making deliveries. The HSE adds that heavy manual labour, awkward postures, manual materials handling, and previous or existing injury are all risk factors in developing MSDs. Useful information on the scale and nature of this aspect of Health & Safety is provided in the HSE leaflet ‘Manual handling at work’, INDG143(rev3).
The Regulations require employers to avoid the need for hazardous manual handling, so far as is reasonably practicable; to assess the risk of injury from any such tasks that cannot be avoided; and to
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Chutes and flow racking are pointed out as being other convenient solutions, using gravity to move loads from one place to another, while handling devices such as hand-held hooks or suction pads can simplify the problem of dealing with a load that is difficult to grip. Hand pallet trucks and roll cages can be used for moving bulky loads manually, and turntables, inverters and drum rotators can facilitate the manipulation of bulky loads. Similarly, workers can use powered lift trucks to move items such as pallets into position, prior to the manual handling of individual items on the pallet. We give an overview of some of the latest equipment available for this important area of Health & Safety in our product review starting on page 31.
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www.hse.gov.uk
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