Abstract
Agricultural upper limb assessment (AULA), which was developed for evaluating upper limb body postures, was compared with the existing assessment tools such as rapid upper limb assessment (RULA), rapid entire body assessment (REBA), and ovako working posture analysis system (OWAS) based on the results of experts’ assessments of 196 farm tasks in this study. The expert group consisted of ergonomists, industrial medicine experts, and agricultural experts. As a result of the hit rate analysis, the hit rate (average: 48.6%) of AULA was significantly higher than those of the other assessment tools (RULA: 33.3%, REBA: 30.1%, and OWAS: 34.4%). The quadratic weighted kappa analysis also showed that the kappa value (0.718) of AULA was significantly higher than those of the other assessment tools (0.599, 0.578, and 0.538 for RULA, REBA, and OWAS, respectively). Based on the results, AULA showed a better agreement with expert evaluation results than other evaluation tools. In general, other assessment tools tended to underestimate the risk of upper limb posture in this study. AULA would be an appropriate evaluation tool to assess the risk of various upper limb postures.
Highlights
The possibility of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), which are accompanied by pain in muscles, tendons, and nerves, increases due to repetitive activities and awkward working postures [1]
To verify verify the theevaluation evaluationofofupper upper limb assessment tools (AULA, rapid upper limb assessment (RULA), rapid entire body assessment (REBA), ovako working posture analysis system (OWAS)), To limb assessment tools (AULA, RULA, REBA, and and OWAS), working postures were selected from various crops according to the height of crops (Figure working postures were selected from various crops according to the height of crops (Figure 1)
On the work postures assessed by experts at risk level 4, REBA was all downgraded to risk level 2
Summary
The possibility of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), which are accompanied by pain in muscles, tendons, and nerves, increases due to repetitive activities and awkward working postures [1]. The aging of the rural regions and the decrease in the farming population per household has led to a severe reduction in the labor force and an increase in labor intensity, causing serious WMSDs problems for farmworkers [4,5]. The prevalence of WMSDs, in the trunk, shoulder, and hand/wrist, is very high in Asian farmers [6,7,8,9]. The prevalence (61.5%) of WMSDs among farmworkers, forestry workers, and fishers was 2.5 times higher than that (25.1%) of workers in other fields [10]. It is important to determine the work-related risk factors to reduce WMSDs in the agriculture environment [11]
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