ergonomics issues

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Picking Season Brings Ergonomics to Field

By CARA ANNA

The Associated Press

Monday, April 3, 2006; 4:49 AM

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Rowland knows what

he'll be seeing as a new farm season begins:

Bag-toting orchard workers with sore backs.

Rowland, an occupational medicine specialist with

the Maine Migrant Health Program, has watched as

pickers lift a 42-pound bag of fruit and then

place that tipsy weight on a 16-foot ladder.

" We give them pain medication, and hope they get through the season, " he said.

Now some researchers like Rowland are chasing a

better option. In efforts that reach from

California's central valleys to New York's apple

orchards, they're applying a practice better

known to office dwellers: Ergonomics.

Why not farm work? It's repetitive and physical.

When pay is by the piece, the temptation

increases to work faster and under larger loads.

And harvest work is usually compressed into a few

weeks or months, as maturing fruit in a

multi-billion-dollar industry waits for no one. Muscles pay the price.

This year's debate over tougher immigration law

brings a new urgency. Concerns about a possible

farmworker shortage means more pressure to keep existing workers healthy.

" I can't express how valuable each worker is

now, " says Al Mulbury, an apple farmer in

Plattsburgh, N.Y. " If you mistreat them, they'll go someplace else. "

His farm has tested a new fruit bag designed to

reduce back and shoulder injuries. This season,

wider testing is planned in other states.

In Washington state, the country's largest apple

producer, the Pacific Northwest Agricultural and

Safety Health Center is testing high-tech orchard

ladders that sound an alarm when they risk becoming unbalanced.

And an orchard safety project is planned this

season in California and southern Oregon by the

Agricultural Ergonomics Research Center at the

University of California at . A 2003 study

of California migrant workers found strains and

sprains showed up three times as much as other injuries, or 31 percent overall.

The cost of such injuries is hard to measure.

Leigh with the Center for Health Services

Research at the University of California at

estimates that sprains and strains cost the

agriculture industry $1.266 billion in 2005,

about $139 million of that from orchard work.

" Manual labor is probably here to stay, " says

Giulia Earle-, a researcher with the

Northeast Center for Agricultural and

Occupational Health in stown. " If we can

make it less uncomfortable, we should do it. "

A study by her office in 2003 shows neck and

shoulder sprains are the top problems reported at

migrant worker health centers in the Northeast, at 37 percent.

In New York, the country's second-largest apple

producer, workers typically use bags weighing up

to 42 pounds, or about a bushel, when full, with

the weight swinging from just a shoulder strap or

two. Earle-'s redesigned bag helps

anchor the weight near workers' waists.

Rowland hopes to test some of the bags in Maine

this season. They might also work for citrus

picking in places such as Florida, where bag

loads can reach close to 80 pounds.

In any ergonomics project, the challenge is

finding solutions cheap enough to interest

farmers, and non-threatening enough to tell

workers the tools aren't taking their jobs.

It doesn't always work. One notable flop was a

cart for low-lying crops that had workers lying

and picking on their stomachs, as if they were swimming over the plants.

It erased the iconic image of farmworkers bending

in the fields. But it was quickly rejected. Not a

proper position for females, workers said.

Victor Duraj with the University of California at

chuckles at the memory. " I think we've

already taken it apart for parts, " he says.

___

On the Net:

Northeast Center for Agricultural and

Occupational Health: http://www.nycamh.com/

Agricultural Ergonomics Research Center: http://ag-ergo.ucdavis.edu/

National Ag Safety Database: http://www.cdc.gov/nasd

© 2006 The Associated Press

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