12 April 2010

Work Related Upper Limb Disorders

Repetitive tasks are typically found in finishing areas of print and print related companies,  for example hand feeding machines, packing finished goods and hand collating of sheets and hand stripping tasks. Many companies try to cover these activities by using a standard manual handling assessment form but in some instances these do not cover this type of assessment in sufficient detail.

The Health and Safety Executive in conjunction with Health and Safety Laboratories in Buxton have developed an  Assessment of Repetitive Tasks (ART) tool, designed to help you risk assess tasks that require repetitive moving of the upper limbs (arms and hands). It assists you in assessing some of the common risk factors in repetitive work that contribute to the development of Upper Limb Disorders (ULDs).

The ART tool is intended for people with responsibility for the design, assessment, management, and inspection of repetitive work.
More information can be found at : http://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/uld/art/whatis.htm
And the tool itself can be found at:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg438.pdf

The BPIF is currently developing a risk assessment form for use with this tool and it will be published on our web site shortly.