Safety
Technology

New Wearable Technologies Measure Stressors That Lead to Workplace Injuries

New wearable technologies objectively measure postures and forces on isolated muscle groups, bones and tissues for a better understanding of risks related to musculoskeletal injuries.
By Scott Smith
February 8, 2021
Topics
Safety
Technology

As more construction firms look to enhance safety and reduce worker injuries and accidents, many now recognize that “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” is not only untrue, but can put workers in harm’s way. Instead, at construction sites and workplaces across many industries outdated ergonomics approaches are gradually being replaced by new technologies that facilitate precise objective measurement of postures and forces on isolated muscle groups, bones and tissues.

The result: a more complete understanding of the actual risks related to musculoskeletal injuries, which can lead to fewer and less severe injuries, better loss experience and improved overall performance. Today, the new catch-phrase for construction site safety/ergonomics should be “objective data is powerful knowledge.”

While growing numbers of construction firms are beginning to explore and apply some wearable technology to reduce workplace injuries, they can still take a lesson from the manufacturing trade in their evolving efforts to address repetitive motion and other biomechanical-related injuries.

Notably, traditional ways of performing injury risk analysis by shadowing and videoing employees as they work and using a binary risk-screening tool can be error-prone based on user experiences. The inaccuracies can yield incomplete pictures of what improved work practices should look like. Now, however, more accurate wearable systems are being adopted to measure employees' internal responses to work versus observing what one may think is happening.

For decades, many employers focused on reducing back injuries by implementing administrative controls, stretching exercises and employee training programs, including emphasizing proper lifting techniques. While these remedies proved helpful to some degree, the difference between proper lifting and poor lifting might only yield limited risk reduction and still prove to be unsafe.

Thus, a contractor still may see a significant number of back and shoulder injuries because the nature of the work altogether simply involves higher risk of injury. Even some wearables may not provide sufficient information to assess what may be needed to achieve more significant injury reduction.

For instance, one sensor on a worker’s belt might reveal whether he or she is bending. However, that might be only one of nearly a dozen variables that can lead to back injuries. Today, there are many different options available; the key may be choosing the right type of wearables and combining them with appropriate analytics that give a better indication of what’s actually going on inside the worker.

The latest generation of wearables can help in evaluating the effectiveness of controls and changes in work practices. Besides providing accurate data on stressors associated with lifting and various repetitive tasks, they can be applied to objectively evaluate differences in hand tools, new equipment, work practice changes and even movement techniques.

Newer wearables combined with dynamic 3D biomechanical modeling techniques can enable construction safety professionals and risk managers to assess the physical stressors associated with different construction tools to provide objective validation of any potential improvement available from a change in equipment.

Biomechanics of bodies, a new diagnostic tool used by ergonomics
professionals, contains a human musculoskeletal model with 600 muscles
to calculate muscle forces, joint contact loads, joint torques, and whole-
body dynamic posture assessments using data collected from 16 IMU
sensors. The illustration models the dynamics of a lifting motion.

More specifically, wearables, such as a surface electromyogram (sEMG), allow ergonomists to measure muscle activity and identify potential fatigue. In addition, IMU (inertial measurement units) sensors can track body movements, such as posture, speed, and acceleration, that may increase the internal forces on the body, leading to a higher probability of injury. For instance, shipyards experiencing high volumes of knee-related injuries used pressure-mapping wearables to assess knee pad performance on reducing pressure.

In construction, as in other industries, the applications for data collected through wearable technology encompass not only assessing the potential for injury arising from changes to the workplace and work methods, but also in predicting the overall impact of proposed improvements on productivity.

Even so, many of these applications require refinement. The traditional ergonomics approach typically involves reviewing a job task against a checklist or risk assessment method but fails to measure the actual individual worker’s response to the task. Generally, in any work environment, including construction, more effective analyses of ergonomic activities should involve the following:

  • a dynamic posture assessment for the lower back, neck, shoulder, elbow, and wrist angles in all planes of motion;
  • physiological workloads, including energy output to monitor overall body fatigue;
  • muscle activity levels, which can reveal localized muscle fatigue and help flag the potential for strain-related injuries;
  • rates of repetition related to specific known risk factors;
  • whole-body vibration (lift truck) to hand-arm with respect to the use of hand or power tools;
  • acceleration and velocity of movement, which can lead to the body producing higher joint forces; and
  • mechanical pressure assessments.

At same time, monitoring heart rate can help measure energy expenditure to ensure the activity is not causing overall muscle fatigue.

The combination of these various assessments creates leading indicators on how individuals react to specific types of work tasks, which construction firms can use to proactively assess the likelihood of different types of injuries at the jobsite. They also can test corrective measures, including the effects of job rotations, scheduled breaks, adjustments to positioning and the use of different types of tools believed to reduce stressors and the potential for injury.

Furthermore, in some cases, data generated by wearables can be used to create three-dimensional avatars that can be readily incorporated into training modules aimed at injury reduction and improved productivity.

Today, the use of advanced wearables technologies enables employers to gain better insights into current risks, test the impact of proposed changes and validate the future risks. Understanding complex risk factors and how to measure them objectively can provide better insights into the impact of work on employees as opposed to simply observing what one may think they are doing.

by Scott Smith
During a career that has spanned more than two decades, Scott Smith, CPE, has worked with clients in multiple industries throughout the U.S. and worldwide. Before joining Aon, he was vice president and senior loss control consultant with Lockton Insurance Brokers. He also held leadership positions in ergonomics consulting with Humantech, EORM and ARCADIS. A Certified Professional Ergonomist, he earned a BSc. degree in kinesiology from Waterloo University and is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. He has also conducted numerous professional workshops, courses and seminars on lean ergonomics, Lean Six Sigma deployment and related subjects. 

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