An ergonomic assessment of the airline baggage handler

30■■■■■■■Had they personally experienced a back injury?How often did they experience back pain?Whether baggage handlers in their organization were required to lift baggage andcargo exceeding 32 kg (701bs) weight? (32 kg is a pre-existing national industrylimit on passenger baggage weight).From a list of five baggage handler workplaces, which were considered most andleast likely to cause back injuries?From a list of twelve manual handling tasks routinely carried out by baggagehandlers, which did they consider to be the five most likely to cause baggagehandler back injuries.What back injury control measures had been applied in their companies? Inparticular, information was sought on use of back support belts training, use ofequipment, use of narrow body aircraft in-plane baggage stacking systems anddetails of any attempts at building re-design to reduce the instances of baggagehandler manual handling injuries.What measure did they believe would be necessary in future to reduce theinstance of back injuries to baggage handlers?In the evaluation of the workplaces most likely to cause back injury, (Table 3.4)110 baggage handlers out of 156 (70%), responded that working inside a narrow-bodiedaircraft was the most likely cause of back injury. Twenty seven percent of the baggagehandlers surveyed, out of the remaining 30% responded that baggage check-in, outside