Evaluation of Work Related Musculoskeletal Disorder and Postural Stress of Brick Kiln Workers during Performing Different Brick Making Tasks

Abstract

The presentstudy was aimed to evaluate the musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) and postural stress of brick kiln workers. The study was carried on 111 male and female workers who were engaged in brick kiln work of different villages of some selected districts, e.g., Purba Midnapore, Paschim Midnapore, and Bankura of West Bengal. Modified Nordic questionnaire and body part discomfort (BPD) scale was applied to identify the MSD in different body parts. The postural stress was analyzed by OWAS method. The prevalence of MSD and BPD among the workers was very high and the most affected body parts were neck, shoulder, back and knee. Postural analysis indicated that the workers were subjected to postural stress in all tasks of brick making job and that might be the reason for occurrence of MSD. The squatting posture was the dominating posture in most of the brick making tasks. From the analysis of OWAS it was revealed that among the four action categories (AC 1,2,3, and 4 ) male and female brick kiln workers showed different distribution of ACs in different phases of tasks. The clay cutting task, which was performed in kneeling posture, showed action category 4, i.e., the task needed corrective measures immediately. Whereas in other tasks, viz, the preparation of clay lump (done in squatting posture with forward bending), filling the dice with clay (done in squatting posture), keeping the raw brick (done in twisted squatting posture), and cleaning the dice with dry sand (done in twisting posture), the action category 2, was found i.e., the task needed corrective measures in the near future. Thus, immediate ergonomic interventions are needed to reduce their work stress by correcting awkward postures.