Text For Citation: 02 Item/Group: 001 Hazard: ERGONOMIC

Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970: The employer did not furnish employment and a place of employment which were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees in that employees were exposed to increased risk of cumulative trauma disorders (CTD) from the tasks they were performing and administrative, or engineering controls were not provided: a. Bag Department - Employees manually pressing side plates and core plugs onto rolls of plastic bags were exposed to repetitive hand, wrist, and arms motion, resulting in trauma to tendons and nerves, such as capal tunnel syndrome, on or about September 26 1991. Step 1 Effective administrative protection, such as employee training, physical assessment, job rotation, etc. shall be provided as an interim protective measure until feasible engineering or administrative controls can be implemented or whenever such controls fial to reduce employee exposure to nominal risk. Step 2 Submit to the Area Director a written, detailed plan of abatement outlining a schedule for the implementation of engineering or administrative measures of control employee injury due to manual lifting tasks. Engineering controls to reduce musculoskeletal stresses include, but are not limited to job redesign, reduction of the horizontal and vertical load distance from the body, reduction of the lifting aids. This plan shall include at a minimu, target dates for the following actions which must be consistent with the dates required by this citation. 1) Evaluation of the conditions, locations and manual lifting activities that the employees are performing at the onset of musculoskeletal injuries. 2) Evaluation of applicable control measure(s). 3) Procurement, installation and operation of selected control measures. 4) Monitoring to assure effective utilization of the control measure(s). Step 3 Abatement shall have been completed by implementation of feasible engineering or administrative controls, upon verification of their effectiveness in reducing the occurrence of muscculoskeletal injuries.