Assessment of Risk Factors of Upper Extremity Musculoskeletal Disorders (UEMSDS) by OCRA Method in Repetitive Tasks

The high occurrence of upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders (uemsds) in iranian ironwork industries indicates aneed to assess the risk factors of the disorders at such workplaces. in order to prevent such disorders, the occupational repetitiveactions (ocra) carried out to obtain an integrated assessment of the various risk factors, classify different jobs andsuggest ergonomic designing solutions. four data gathering methods including observational, interview, nordic musculoskeletalquestionnaire (nmq), and ocra were utilized. all 385 male workers occupying in five various jabs (72 tasks)in qaemshahre ironwork industry located in the north of iran were studied. the percent of work tasks lain in low, moderate,and high-risk level were 6.14%, 69.27%, and 24.59%, respectively. mean of exposure indices between five jobs includingadministrative (0.69), lathing (2.87), welding (3.43), melting (3.58) and foundry (5.96) jobs showed significant difference(f= 4.881, p= 0.003). in addition, the foundry job had the highest risk of occurrence of uemsds. the highest incidence ofdistal upper extremity was allocated to the hand and fingers region. there was a significant relationship between surveyedwork groups and incidences of upper extremities (÷2= 6.425, p= 0.008). the ocra method could be a useful method forevaluating risk factors of uemsds in repetitive tasks of the ironwork industry.