Manual Handling is one of the most common causes of injury in the workplace. Manual Handling generally includes; lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling or carrying, and most employees carry out some sort of manual handling within their working day.
Common types of injury caused by manual handling are:
- Back pain
- Sprains and strains to lower back and shoulders
- Damages to muscles and tendons
The Manual Handling Operations Regulations were introduced in 1992 in order to keep employees safe in the workplace and to reduce the number of employees injured at work.
The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 set out that employer should ‘so far as is reasonably practicable, avoid the need for his employees to undertake any manual handling operations at work which involve a risk of injury‘ and ‘shall make a suitable and sufficient assessment of all such operations which cannot be avoided‘ plus ‘shall take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of injury during those operations to the lowest level reasonably practicable‘.
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