Municipal waste collectors must avoid bag-body contact, requiring waste bags to be held further from the body. Donning sharps-proof clothing would permit bag-body contact, allowing the bag to be closer to the body, reducing biomechanical exposures. To test this hypothesis, 25 participants loaded waste bags into a simulated garbage truck hopper under two lifting (contact allowed, no contact) and bag mass (7 kg and 20 kg) conditions. Bottom-up rigid-link biomechanical modelling results including peak low back compression force, antero-posterior shear force and peak low back flexion angle were not different between the lifting conditions, but cumulative compression was decreased with bag-body contact, although only at the 20 kg mass. Bag mass had significant effects on outcome measures, causing compression to increase to 4663 (±697) N, exceeding recommended thresholds. Sharps-proof clothing and municipally mandated 23 kg maximum allowable bag mass restrictions may not sufficiently reduce biomechanical exposures to prevent MSD.
Keywords: Ergonomics; Occupational lifting; Sharps-proof clothing.
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