Ergonomics: Design Workspaces for Health & Safety

by Kim Caserta, Consulting Safety Officer, Safety Partners, Inc.
Denise Aronson, President, Safety Partners, Inc.

Ergonomics is the study of the workplace design and how an individual interacts with their workspace, including the overall work area, all equipment and processes. An ergonomically designed workspace or process is one that has been designed to reduce fatigue and discomfort as well as physical injury. Ergonomics can be summed up as fitting the workspace or work process to the person.

Are the workspaces and processes at your facility ergonomically designed? Reviewing injury records and performing job analyses will help you determine if your workplace is ergonomically friendly. OSHA refers to ergonomic injuries as musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) but repetitive stress injury (RSI) is also a common term. Symptoms of MSD may include pain, tingling, numbness, or discomfort in the affected area. Carpel tunnel syndrome and tendonitis are common musculoskeletal disorders.

Do your employees work at biosafety cabinets, on manufacturing floors, at computer stations? Do they spend time at a microscope or perform experiments that require repetitive pipetting?

Designing a workspace or process that is ergonomically friendly does not mean you have to spend large sums of money. Ergonomically friendly processes can be as simple as including micro breaks for stretches during the day or rotating tasks such that you change muscle groups used throughout the day. Some other lower-cost approaches to an ergonomic workspace or process are:

• Setting the chair at the appropriate height when working at a biosafety cabinet.
• Using anti-fatigue mats.
• Using a platform to raise the microscope so posture is not bent or hunched.
• Replacing electronic pipettors for manual pipettors.

And we can't forget that most of us work with computers each day. There is an eTool offered through the OSHA website that can assist with creating a safe and comfortable computer workstation. (See www.osha.gov.)

Safety Partners, Inc. is also available to assist with creating ergonomic workspaces. Safety Partners employs an ergonomics expert that is available for on site analysis and training.

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Safety Partners efficiently and cost-effectively implements hands-on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) programs at emerging life sciences companies. Safety Partners tailors its programs to each client's unique science, processes, procedures, and facilities, while reducing program implementation burdens. Its expertise is unmatched, clocking over 85,000 hours at over 120 New England life sciences firms.