Hazard Analysis

the office, actually, where the people are that you speak to when you

have technical problems or you have questions about the class that the

faculty are not answering. These are the folks to help you get through

your courses here at UNE. So when you're online program office for

UNE, which is in the campus in Portland. And we're going to taking a

look at how people work in an office environment. This is very typical

of any kind of office environment you might be involved in. And what

I'm going to do is I'm going to go off camera now and I'll be giving

you the data. What I want you to do is take your hazard analysis

worksheets and I want you to actually as this video progresses, I'm

not going to fill the worksheet out for you. You're going to fill it

out yourself. I want you to complete the worksheet and if you need to

listen to this video numerous times, that's fine, just do it as many

times you want. You'll pick up elements of the occupational

epidemiology we talked about in the textbook in terms of identifying

hazards. You're going to find - some of you will find more than

others, but that's fine. The whole purpose of this is for you to be

observant and to see if you can identify hazards that exist. So, I'm

going off camera now and we're going to take a look at the work site,

itself. This is a typical office where you'll find people sitting at

various workstations. Some of them are the traditional sitting

position. Some actually in stands and you see two stand sites that are

unoccupied right now, probably during our survey they will get

occupied, but those people actually work standing. There are a number

of different choices you could make in terms of your own set up, your

home workplace. And these are some of the ones that we have already

demonstrated here. And one of the things I'm going to do for you first

is I want to take some measurements. And I'll just call these

measurements [inaudible]. These are basically the site measurements

that you might take when you first come in. One of them is which

extremely important, is the temperature. The reading in the

temperature right now here is - it's actually 25.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

And the humidity level is 52.2% as we're measuring it right now. So

you might want to mark that down on your datasheet somewhere. If

there's no place for it, just mark it anywhere on the datasheet. Next

thing we'll take a look at, if I can get to the section properly is

noise. Now noise level right now that I'm measuring and I'll keep

quiet because you're picking up my voice is around 40 PB when I'm not

speaking. Now sometime during the survey the HVAC will come on and

I'll do the [inaudible] meter again and we'll see what happens when

the [inaudible] comes on, whether that changes it dramatically. The

next piece of data we're going to get is the light reader. And we're

going to measure light. It looks - so you can look that up if you

want. And I'm going to measure this at a desk site. So I'm putting it

right down here and we're measuring 461, or changes. But it looks like

its averaging around 480, lux, L-U-X. You can look that word up. And

it can also, for these measurements, take a look at what these

measurements should be from the standpoint of best working conditions

for lighting, for noise, and for the temperature. The other thing that

we can't measure is actually air quality, but when we talk to the

workers we can get some idea of how the air quality is affecting. Now

you'll notice different desks at different sights. And that is to a

certain extent, personal comfort. When I first started doing these

kinds of surveys, I would walk into a manufacturing operation, for

example, and find all the workstations at the same height. However,

the people varied in height, obviously, from five feet to close to

seven feet. So how did that work? Not well. In an office now we can

actually set up our desks at the various heights. And I'm going to

measure this one first. Let me see what this one is. This one is just

around six inches. This one is [inaudible] 30 inches [inaudible]. This

one here is a little bit [inaudible] this is [inaudible]. You'll find

that [inaudible] the recommended distance from the floor for most, for

the average person it's going to be - I'm talking about the average

person, is about 27 inches. Your best comfort level on keyboard. So we

have height from the floor to the surface. We also have sitting. Now

if we take a look at Cynthia here she's sitting properly. She's got

her feet on the floor, when she - on the first thing she want

[inaudible]. And she's sitting up reasonably straight. And she looks

like she's in a fairly comfortable position. And you'll notice that

she's a little cold. She's actually wearing mittens. Temperature is

personal. And what might be warm for me is cold for her. That makes it

very difficult when you're working in an office environment to get the

right temperature for everyone. It's almost next to impossible. Now if

we can come in a little bit closer and take a look at what Cynthia is

doing. She's keyboarding. Very common activity. Her keyboard is on her

desk and like we said it's about 29 inches. A little bit high for

[inaudible]. She's got her mouse very close to her when she's

[inaudible]. We got her hooked up to something called an ergo meter,

which is basically a little device here that measures muscle activity.

[Inaudible] you can see what's happening is we're [inaudible] muscle

activity. Remember from Michael Lawrence's lab [inaudible]. He had

this hooked up to a computer screen so you can actually see it. We

don't have that one, but we do have this. [Inaudible]. When she's in a

comfortable position we're not getting very many signals at all. But

as she gets more active, say for example I move her mouse over to a

uncomfortable place [inaudible] here, when she reaches for it, let's

see what happens. So this is basically giving us an audio picture of

her muscle activity, just like the last gave us a visual picture. You

want to be in a situation where your muscles are firing the least

possible. And you can see if - while keyboarding may not seem like a

very physical activity, you're actually using your muscles a lot. In

this case the [inaudible] on your arm and for a certain extent your

[inaudible] muscles also. So pardon my pronunciation of the Latin. I'm

an engineer and I don't [inaudible] person. The other thing that

people do a lot is they answer the phone. Why don't you answer the

phone, and see what happens. Hello.

>> Okay.

>> All right. Many times people will not be able to keyboard and do

the phone at the same time, so what would you do?

>> Hold it under [inaudible].

>> Hold this like this. That's another very physical activity. If we

had her shoulder muscles hooked up to this thing, you're going be off

the scale. So what have we learned from this? That there are good ways

and bad ways to work at a desk. Now, when we start to talk about how

many hours of the day are you at your desk?

>> Typically the standard eight hours a day.

>> Standard eight hours. If we would talk about rest areas and all

it's an addition, it's an excess of a four hours that you'll see on

your worksheet is one of the questions is that? How long is this act

going to be done? So, one of the things we'd like to see people do is

actually get up and take a break every once in a while. Even mini

breaks can be hugely helpful. This may be discussed in your text, but

it was discussed in one of the lectures that I give. So even small

breaks are very healthy. Working constantly in a situation where your

body is not used to it can cause stress on those muscles and that

eventually cause problems down the road. Each [inaudible] system is on

now and I'm measuring anywhere from 60 to 80 BBs. So it's averaging

somewhere around 75 BB, which for an office environment is fairly

loud. That was before when the [inaudible] system was off [inaudible].

One of the things we want to look at when we're talking about your set

up with your computer station, I'm talking about Cynthia here, is your

head location in relation to the screen. It should be comfortable and

what is comfortable? And this is where you're talking about people. So

exact angles are not - are going to be used here, but you don't want

to be looking horizontally at your screen, we want your head tilted a

little bit. And Cynthia is tilted a little bit and now the way

equipment comes, especially these, you know these thin screens that we

have for [inaudible]. You can adjust those anyway you want. So you

could move that screen down a little bit, you can move it up. I might

recommend as simple as you move it down just a slight bit. It would be

a little bit probably better for her. But in addition to the hand

movements, which we measured when she was doing keyboarding, you want

to think about your neck, because when you're sitting in a static

position like this for a long lengths of time, your head weighs about

17 pounds. If Cynthia was in a bad light situation, she had to bend

over like this, you can imagine your head hanging off your neck stem

is going to get tired very, very quickly. So we want to be in a

situation where we do not put our head move forward too much. Take

really slight [inaudible]. So we seen the office environment. We seen

it in a number of different settings. We've also measured the noise

level and we measured the temperature. We measured the light level and

we see what the muscles are doing physically. So these are all

physical activities that go on in an office. They're usually are not a

lot of chemical exposures around, just hopefully. We don't have any CO

or anything like that coming in. If we do that, then that's an acute

issue that needs to be taken care of very quickly. So at this point

I'd like to move off from the strictly physical activities and we can

actually maybe move to a different setting for the cycle social

questions. Thank you. I'll be back, but now we're going to actually

talk a little bit about some of the things we didn't get a chance to

talk about in the office itself. And that is something you're

[inaudible] on issues that we said we didn't really have measurements

for, when we can talk to Cynthia about. For example, we measured a

temperature of around 22 degrees centigrade in the office, maybe it

was 24, but it seems really warm. Is that temperature constant or is

it vary [inaudible]?

>> It varies. The temperature of the office fluctuates quite

frequently throughout the day. There is an air conditioner that comes

on sometimes sporadically, but it is obviously sensitive to the

temperature variation in the room. But when that comes on the blower

comes along with it and it flows right behind my desk.

>> So that was another question. The vent does blow directly on you?

>> Yes.

>> Which is not good. So you have noticed drafts. Have you noticed any

breathing? Had you had any breathing issues in the office at all?

>> I haven't had much in this office. Sometimes my throat will get

dry, but it's nothing that can't be cured with, you know, drinking

some water. So nothing extreme.

>> No allergy triggers?

>> I have not, no.

>> Okay, good. What about any - have you experienced any mold in this

office at all?

>> Yeah, in one of the bathrooms.

>> Bathrooms, but not in the general working area?

>> Not that I've been aware.

>> Unfortunately wherever there is moisture, mold can occur. The

humidity level in the office was in a pretty good setting. So that

didn't seem to be a problem in the office, but it could be in the

bathroom, very [inaudible]. We measured the BB level, we measured the

[inaudible] level. We noticed you were cold so you were admitting some

[inaudible]. So we've covered those items. [Inaudible], and you'll be

covering this in your modules is psychosocial factors. Once we've

taken a look at the environment. And the environment always used to be

considered the air. If you're in a water environment, the water

because it really shows posture while you sit in a chair. Those are

all environmental issues that people always thought about. They never

thought about the psychosocial issues. And this came to the floor

about 20, 30 years ago in occupational health research and knowledge

is extremely important because people do leave work with issues of

anxiety, issues of psychological and they leech off for a vary other

reasons too. There currently related to the psychosocial factors in a

job. So I'm going to ask Cynthia a series of questions. Now on your

hazard form, you have these questions. They're also discussed in the

lecture. And what I want you to do is I want you to take down the

answers on your form, so that we know that you have those answers and

then go into the actual algorithms and calculate what these various

demand and control scores are. And we'll be asking for this in your

final report. So I'm going to just straight ask the questions. I'm not

even going to differentiate between demand or [inaudible]. I'm not

going to talk about that. When you do these interviews with people in

the field you just ask the questions. You don't really give any clues

as to what those questions are going to be doing, because that will

bias their answers. So that's basically what I'm going to do.

Typically, if I was doing this and they feel, I would not be going

through all this explanation, obviously. I would just be asking the

questions. So here's we - here we go. Cynthia, I'm going to ask you

some of these questions and what I'm going to ask you to answer is, do

you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree. So it's a

four scale like a scale. There's no way you could sit on a fence, we

actually left - you actual forced choice here.

>> Okay.

>> So first question is, is your job required to work very fast, fast?

Strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree?

>> Disagree.

>> Disagree. Okay. My job requires me working very hard?

>> Strongly agree.

>> I am not asked to do an excessive amount of work?

>> Agree.

>> I have enough time to get my job done?

>> Agree.

>> I am free from conflicting demands that may come [inaudible] to me.

I'm free from conflicting demands that others make?

>> Agree.

>> My job allows me to make a lot of decisions on my own?

>> Agree.

>> [inaudible]

>> Strongly agree.

>> Strongly, okay. On my job I have very little freedom to decide how

to do my work?

>> Disagree.

>> My job requires that I learn new things?

>> Strongly agree.

>> My job involves a lot of repetitive work?

>> Agree.

>> My job requires to be creative?

>> Strongly agree.

>> My job requires a high level of skill?

>> Strongly agree.

>> I get to do a variety of things on my job?

>> Agree.

>> I have an opportunity to develop my own special ability?

>> Strongly agree.

>> That's it. I didn't see any evidence of any vibrating tools that

you used on this job site [inaudible]. This really completes the site

survey of an office. Well now you should be able to complete the

hazard form and get started on your report. Thank you.