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Evaluation of Risk Factors of Upper Limb Musculoskeletal Disorders in a Meat Processing Company

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Advances in Safety Management and Human Factors (AHFE 2018)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the risks associated with repetitive movements of the upper limbs in different meat processing tasks of a pig slaughterhouse. The study was conducted in a Brazilian pig slaughterhouse, in which 200 workers were evaluated through the OCRA Checklist. There were 18 work tasks analyzed from the following sectors: cuts (8); ham (4); pepperoni (3); sausage (2) and salami (1). The average score of OCRA Checklist was 20.6 ± 5.8 (moderate risk). The scores for the right upper limb (20.4 ± 6.0 - moderate risk) did not differ (p = 0.163) from the left upper limb (20.6 ± 5.8 - moderate risk). Two work tasks were considered high risk (11%) and 16 were within a moderate risk (89%). These results suggest that pig processing tasks predispose workers to a greater probability of developing upper limb work-related musculoskeletal disorders (>21.5% probability for high risk and 10.8 to 21.5% for moderate risk).

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Correspondence to Diogo Cunha dos Reis .

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dos Reis, D.C., Tirloni, A.S., Ramos, E., Moro, A.R.P. (2019). Evaluation of Risk Factors of Upper Limb Musculoskeletal Disorders in a Meat Processing Company. In: Arezes, P. (eds) Advances in Safety Management and Human Factors. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 791. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94589-7_41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94589-7_41

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