Use NIOSH’s lifting equation tool
There is a mobile application for almost any topic you can think about nowadays. It should be no surprise there’s one for evaluating lifting hazards on your jobsite. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Lifting Equation has been around for decades, and it updated the tool in 2017 to make it easier to use. NIOSH’s free mobile application (app), NLE Calc, provides risk estimates for lifting tasks to reduce the incidence of lower back injuries among workers.
The app is intended to help workers in construction, and other industries, where lifting is a part of the job. Each lifting task is assigned a score, along with recommendations on how to optimize the task or perform it more safely. This tool calculates the overall risk index for single and multiple manual workplace lifting tasks. NIOSH says the app can provide the following benefits:
- Calculating the composite lifting index (CLI) for multiple lifting tasks,
- Using equations approved by NIOSH ergonomists (who created the original NIOSH Lifting Equation),
- Promoting better musculoskeletal health and prevention benefits,
- Raising workers’ awareness about their job tasks,
- Helping workers make informed decisions about the potential hazards to their musculoskeletal health,
- Serving as job design guidelines for manual lifting tasks, and
- Collecting manual lifting data (as a research tool).
According to NIOSH, work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are common in industries where lifting is part of the job. It’s estimated that MSDs are responsible for one-third of the work-related injuries that result in missed workdays, costing approximately $45 to $54 billion annually in lost productivity and medical expenses. When the load’s weight is determined to be unsafe to lift, using mechanical means like a telehandler or crane should be considered.