Muscoskeletal disease is sadly a very common condition for people working in many different industries, but particularly those people working in the building industry.
Muscoskeletal disease causes pain, tenderness and just general discomfort in the joints, tendons and spine which will ultimately lead to possible permanent damage to the spine and skeleton.
It is caused by bad manual handling, for example repetitive movements during manual handling and movemnts that use more force than usual.
Other factors that contribute to include:
By choosing materials that aren’t as heavy, planning ahead and using tools to help you you can reduce your risk. Here are 6 other ways to help prevent muscoskeletal disease.
1) Always think about which employees will work best for a particular job by looking at what training they’ve had, their height and weight and how strong they are.
2) Use the lightest material possible for your needs. This includes things like bags of sand and cement.
3) Plan your route of transporting the weight from its current position to its end destination and thereby reducing how much lifting and carrying you need to do. Try and keep them as close together as possible.
4) Use aids to help you, like lifting equipment and tell others to do the same.
5) Don’t do any repetitive lifting with big blocks
6) Training your staff is a good way of preventing muscoskeletal disease. If they know the right way to use lifting aids it will be benefical for them.
TL Safety and Alliance Learning run regular courses on manual handling so you can learn the correct way to lift things properly. Get in touch with them to find out more.
