An investigation into complaints of wrist pain and swelling among workers at a factory manufacturing motors for refrigerators.

In 1987, a group of workers complained through their union that some of them developed wrist pain and swelling from the manual handling of heavy stators. The complaints were from the morning shift of a particular assembly line in a factory making motors for refrigerators. The precipitating factor appeared to be the change in the weight of the model assembled. The new stator weighing 5.8 kg was about twice as heavy as the previous model. Each worker on the line handled 300 to 1,000 stators per shift. The work involved including lifting the stators onto and off the conveyor belts and pushing and pulling them along horizontal planes. To evaluate the problem, workers from both shifts of the affected assembly line were interviewed and examined. A total of 79 workers (all females) was involved. The presence and severity of work-related aches, pains, numbness, swelling, etc over the last 4 weeks were enquired. The nature of the work done in the line was observed. Sixty-three out of 79 workers had some symptoms giving an overall prevalence rate of 79.8%. The two most common complains were pain (90.5%) and numbness (28.6%). The most commonly affected sites were the hands and wrist followed by the neck and shoulder. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of symptoms among workers in the 2 shifts. The symptoms were subjective and associated with job dissatisfaction and there was no difference in the average number of stators handled between those with symptoms and those without.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)