Musculoskeletal Disorder's Risk Factors Assessment by RULA and LUBA and Comparing Results in a Printing and Publication Company

Printing industry with a high level of financial turnover is known as a main industry all around the world. Different hazardous factors, such as ergonomics, can be found in this industry. On the other hand, there are a variety of methods to assess ergonomic issues at the workplaces. Present study is aimed to analysis operational workers’ postures and to compare the results and concurrent validity of LUBA based on RULA results, in a printing and publication company in Qom, 2014.
This study considered all operational workers in a printing industry (n=80) in ten various jobs. Rapid upper limb assessment and postural loading on the upper body assessmenthave been applied to assess conditions. Gathered data was analyzed by Spearman and Kappa (P All workers were aged more than 36 years old and had 15-20 years’ work experience. Results of both methods depicted that most of postures were at the second action category and needed more studies. Correlation and agreements between postures were significant (P0.05).
Results illustrated acceptable correlation between different parts and reasonable agreement between wrists, elbow and shoulder’s postures, but neck’s posture and action categories agreements were not good. In addition, analyses illustrated that concurrent validity of LUBA is not acceptable in this industry. However, more researches are recommended.