Nowadays the word "ergonomics" often appears in promotional copy for office furniture, kitchen design and even footwear fashions. But what does it really mean? According to the National Council on Ergonomics, an alliance of businesses and associations representing large, mid-sized and small employers across the U.S., "Ergonomics is a descriptive term that is properly applied to an industrial engineering approach to workplace design that is intended to derive maximum productivity from the workplace by assuring that worker discomfort and fatigue are minimized."

There is ongoing debate about the validity of ergonomic regulations imposed across the board, throughout many diverse industries, but at the core of disagreement is the lack of consensus on the causes and remedies for musculoskeletal aches and pains. While there exist several high-profile studies documenting a causal relationship between repetitive motion and musculoskeletal disorders ("MSDs"), there are an equal number of medical and scientific studies that maintain the causes of musculoskeletal complaints are multiple and varied. If a dozen workers perform the identical task for the same number of hours over the course of each workday, and only one develops symptoms of an MSD nature, then it would seem logical to conclude that the single individual’s general health or genetics or physical fitness or nutritional intake or level of daily stress, or any combination of these factors, is having a major impact on his/her proclivity to aches and pains.

According to OSHA, work-related MSDs arise when the physical capacity of the human body and the physical requirements of the job are mismatched. The resultant problems encompass RSIs, an acronym for repetitive strain or repetitive stress injuries. All these terms, RSIs, MSDs, ergonomics disorders, are blanket names used to describe many types of soft tissue injury, such as carpel tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, epicondylitis, back injuries and more.

At Lovell Safety Management, we recognize that proper workstation design and tactics that minimize work-related stressors, that is, pushing, pulling, lifting, reaching and bending, are valid preventive measures. We fully support workplace ergonomics programs from a cost containment, claims prevention and ethical perspective, and urge all our Safety Group members to set one up, if they currently have none. Contact your local Lovell representative: We will help to document whatever you might have done already, provide assistance in performing a job hazard analysis and guide you in instituting cost-effective solutions.

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