The Dortmund Lumbar Load Atlas

This handbook supports the identification of inappropriate work design in manual materials handling and thus the prevention of overloading the body and of the development of health disorders. The approach at hand, The Dortmund Lumbar Load Atlas, is focussed exclusively on biomechanical aspects of loading, overload criteria and signs of overloading in the form of verifiable low-back diseases due its strikingly frequently affectedness.

Manual materials handling is understood to be the holding, lifting or lowering, pulling or pushing as well as carrying of load objects and thus the application of forces mostly with one or both hands on the item handled. Due to the biomechanical similarity, special handling tasks are also addressed, such as shoveling bulk material, transporting goods via wheelbarrow and moving people manually in the care sector.

The book aims to promote interest in biomechanical approaches and provides information to all persons involved in the design, evaluation and redesign of manual materials handling, e.g. ergonomists, occupational physicians, orthopaedists, employers or researchers, lecturers and students. This handbook enables analysis of manual materials handlings regarding potential lumbar overload and contains the following:

• a comprehensive collection of data on lumbar load in typical manual materials handling activities--a load register on interbranch activities,
• synopses of previously analysed biomechanically challenging occupational activities--a load register on branch-specific activities,
• explanations of the methodological approach to predicting moments and forces as well as their components in relation to the lumbar spine via biomechanical modelling and
• criteria for the evaluation of load data with regard to potential lumbar overloading during single operations, working shifts and the entire occupational life.

Thenew recommendations on maximum daily exposure for lifelong work for both men and women are bridging the former gap of biomechanically justified action frequency limits and now offer the possibility of a completely biomechanical path for risk assessment of manual materials handling. The book provides hence a serious contribution to the objectification of lumbar load and load-bearing capacity aiming at an ergonomic work design of manual materials handling for short- as well as long-term exposures.