PRELIMINARY RISK ASSESSMENT OF WORK-RELATED MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS IN SMALL-SCALE FEED MILLS

Abstract

Feed mills of low capacities have become the major source of feeds for the agrarians in developing countries. Operations carried out in these feed mills do not totally conform to the standard operations and safety requirements in large scale feed mills. Therefore this paper is aimed at assessing the possibility of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) in these feed mills. A preliminary assessment of the risk was carried out using onsite investigation, interview of workers and a pen-and-paper based analytical tools. Feed discharge, weighing and manual material handling (lifting) operations were evaluated with Quick Exposure Check (QEC) and Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) tools. Results showed that 70 and 60% of the workers experience body pains after and during work respectively. The workers expressed dissatisfaction due to the pains experienced in different body regions. QEC and REBA evaluation showed that the body regions with a high risk of WMSDs are back, shoulder and neck regions for discharge operation; wrist, back, shoulder and neck regions for weighing operation; and back, shoulder, neck, wrist, legs, and elbow regions for manual material handling. WMSDs mitigation measures were suggested for each operation based on identified cause.

Keywords

• feed weighing
• feed mixing and discharge
• manual handling
• qec
• reba