A Look at the Ergonomic Situation of the Bakery Industry in the City of Quito, Ecuador

Abstract

Bread and flour products are one of the main foods in the daily diet of people of Quito, Ecuador. In the city of Quito, there are 1500 legally established bakeries, but the number is much greater and unknown by informal businesses; it is estimated that there are at least 6000 direct jobs impacted, now the fundamental problem in the sector is the lack of technologies. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the level of risk of workers exposed to ergonomic hazards during bread preparation. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional and descriptive study using application-specific methods for postural loading such as the Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) and for repetitive OCRA (Occupational Repetitive Actions) Check List to three of the five largest bakeries in the city of Quito, in all the tasks of kneading, cooking and stowing of the bread in the oven were evaluated. Results: The results of the above methods were analyzed and high levels of risk were found to be intervened immediately Conclusions: There are no studies related to the topic of baking and ergonomics in Quito, so new evaluations should be carried out to complement the results found in a special way in small or artisanal bakeries and can support the improvement of working conditions, in addition to being able to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal damages of labor origin in the field evaluated.