ACCIDENTS IN A POPULATION OF HANDLERS WOR KING IN THE TRANSPORT INDUSTRY

The six hundred eleven accidents of handlers loading or unloading good s from trailers in a warehouse were analysed. The descriptions were cl assified according to the activity at the time of the accident (handli ng action, object handled), the circumstances (incident, cause of the injury), and the type of injury (nature, body area). Results show that while one third of the injuries were of the overexertion type, two th irds were caused by the handled object itself or by another object in the environment. While most of the handling activities involve boxes, it is the handling of other types of goods (bundles, long objects, ree ls, etc.) which caused the majority of accidents. Handling activities reported in the accident descriptions were far more varied than the us ual quartet - lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling - considered in hand ling studies. When an object was transferred, more than one time out o f three, the accident happened while the load was kept in contact with a surface, and the actions applied consisted of sliding, pivoting, or rolling the load An incident was reported in 58% of the accidents, bu t the scenarios were highly variable. However, instability of goods, l oss of control and an unexpected behavior of the load were the three m ost frequently reported events. About one accident out of six also inv olved at some point a loss of balance. Finally as many injuries affect ed the upper or lower limbs as the back. When only back or overexertio n injuries were analysed, the results appeared quite similar to the pu blished data. However, when all handling accidents were considered, it became clear that handling risks could not be described simply as lif ting a box, overexertion and back injury. Risks found in this study ar e clearly more complex.