Fundamental of Ergonomics

SUMMARY OF WORK CAPACITY STRESS AND FATIGUE

Stress is found in everyday life .In general way it is understudy by pain or

tiredness exprenced. However, according to Hooke’s law it is said that applied
load or task, when body get more work as demand that means the work
capacity exceeded that cause fatigue or tiredness.

There are many kinds of fatigue found in factory for example mental fatigue –
after a driving many hours, or operating computer, our brain feel sleepiness.

Our body is made by different –different thing like heart blood, tissue, vassal,
nerves, bone, and muscle etc. Have we ever thought how the physical work
possible, it happen because of muscle through the tension they exert when
contracting.

There are three type of muscle in our body

1. Skeletal muscle
2. Smooth muscle
3. Cardiac muscle

Smooth muscle is found in the intestines and makes possible the movements
essential for the digestion of food. Cardiac muscle has a special structure and
constitutes the bulk of the heart. The present discussion is limited to work
involving skeletal muscle – muscle that is connected to the bones of the
skeleton and passes over joints enabling the bones to act like levers when the
muscle contracts. The mechanism of muscle contraction consists of the actins
filaments sliding over the myosin filaments.

Energy for muscle contraction Energy for muscle contraction (and for many
other bodily processes) comes from the breakdown of a substance known as
ATP (adenosine triphosphate). By the breaking of one of the phosphate bonds,
ATP is converted to ADP (adenosine diphosphate) and energy is made available
inside the cell. Oxygen is required to remove these waste products. If it is not
available when the person is working, the waste products will accumulate.
Under these circumstances it is said that the person has built-up an ‘oxygen
debt’ which must be ‘paid-back’ when work ceases.

The maximum tension a muscle can exert depends on its maximum cross-
sectional area and also its length (as described below). The muscular system
uses oxygen to convert chemical energy from foodstuffs (stored in the tissues
or delivered by the bloodstream) into mechanical energy via the sliding
filament mechanism.

Muscles are able to contract type –

1. Eccentric contractions. The muscle lengthens while contracting.
2. Isometric contractions. The muscle length remains constant during
contraction.
3. Concentric contractions. The muscle shortens while contracting.

These different contractions can be illustrated by considering the action of the

elbow Extensors (such as the triceps muscles) of a person doing push-ups.
When these muscles contract concentrically, the body is raised off the floor
because the shortening of the muscles causes the elbows to extend. They
contract eccentrically when lowering the body to the floor. The eccentric
contraction acts like a brake. It controls the rate at which the muscles increase
their length and at which the elbows flex.

Skeletal muscle contains afferent and efferent fibres from the central nervous
system. This is conducted to the spinal cord and to higher levels of the central
nervous system. The ‘knee-jerk’ reflex is a well known example of a feedback
loop, which is made possible by a neural circuit between the stretch receptors
in the muscle spindles and motor neurons in the spinal cord. When the muscle
is lengthened, the stretch reflex comes into operation causing the muscle to
contract – that is, the reflex opposes the lengthening of the muscle. Muscle
tension is detected by an organ known as the Golgi tendon organ, which is
found at the point where small bundles of muscle fibres fuse with tendon
fibres.

The measure reasons of discomfort in the body made of many soft tissue.
Pressure on these soft tissues can cause Ischaemia (depletion of the local
blood supply to the tissues) ) resulting in a shortage of oxygen and a build up of
carbon dioxide and waste products such as lactic acid. This is known to lead to
sensations of pain or discomfort.
Skeletal muscle makes up 40% of the tissues of the body, skeletal muscle can
be regarded as the largest organ in the body. It is essential for all activities
involving voluntary movement. It should come as no surprise that many of the
aches and pains we experience in our daily lives are of muscular origin. This
indicates why a consideration of work–rest cycles, work durations and forces is
an essential part of the risk assessment process in job evaluation and injury
prevention.

Muscle fatigue is a physiological phenomenon that can be observed directly

using techniques such as electromyography (EMG). Muscle cells are arranged
in functional units known as ‘motor units’. Each motor unit is connected to a
single nerve fibre and all of the cells in that unit fire in response to an impulse
from the fibre on an ‘on–off’ basis.

Electromyography is used by ergonomists to detect workspace and task factors

that cause unnecessary or rapid muscular fatigue. It complements subjective
techniques in which workers are asked to indicate on body diagrams or by
questionnaire the location and severity of musculoskeletal pain.

The cardiovascular system performs a number of functions. It collects oxygen

from the lungs and food from the gut and delivers them to the cells of the
body. It also collects waste products and delivers them to the excretory organs.
Hormones secreted by the endocrine glands in various parts of the body are
transported to target cells in other organs by the blood. Finally, the
cardiovascular system is involved in thermoregulation – the control of body
temperature.

The basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate of energy consumption necessary to
maintain Life. Individuals differ in their BMR ‘Spread’. The BMR can drop by
about 20% in chronically malnourished individuals. Physical work capacity
refers to a worker’s capacity for energy output. This will depend primarily on
the energy available to the worker in the form of food and oxygen and the sum
of the energy provided by oxygen-dependent and oxygen independent
processes. The rate of energy consumption during physical work is the sum of
the basal energy consumption and the metabolic cost of the work in terms of
energy consumption. For continuous work at moderate intensities, oxygen-
dependent processes usually make the major contribution to energy output.
For each litre of oxygen consumed, about 20 kilojoules of energy is released.
Work capacity depends on the ability to take up oxygen and deliver it to the
cells for use in the oxidation of foodstuffs
Exercise physiologists and sports scientists have used the term ‘VO2 max’ to
describe an individual’s capacity to utilise oxygen (aerobic capacity). Oxygen
uptake increases as the work rate is increased. Which a person cannot increase
the work rate any more. There are limits to performance of all human
activities, be they running, cycling or loading boxes onto a conveyor belt in a
factory. For many years it has been believed that the factor that limits a
person’s work rate is the inability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to
the muscles at a sufficiently fast rate to meet the energy requirements of the
work. At this point, the person will reach his or her maximum work rate.
Individual differences in maximum work rate can be traced back, according to
this view, to differences in the ability to supply oxygen to the muscles.

The lower 5th percentile NIOSH (1981) has published data concerning the
maximum aerobic capacity of US workers. The 50th percentile male and female
capacities, in terms of energy output, are approximately 63 and 44 kJ/min,
respectively. Capacities are 52.3 and 33.5 kJ/min. For continuous work, NIOSH
states that energy expenditure should not exceed a value of 33% of an
individual’s maximum capacity (or 21kJ/min for men and 14.6kJ/min for
women) over an 8-hour shift. It can be seen that a 50th-percentile male worker
would be able to carry out heavy work for 8 hours but not very heavy work.

Factors affecting work capacity are these

Many factors can influence a person’s capacity to carry out physical work
Body weight-:
Body weight (particularly the percentage of body tissue that is composed of
fat) influences
All activities in which the worker has to move his own body

Age-:
Age has a significant effect on work capacity. Vo2 max declines gradually after
20 years of age. A 60-year-old has an aerobic capacity of about 70% of a 25-
year-old. This is due to a reduction in cardiac output. Current thinking stresses
that the fundamental ageing phenomenon is due to a loss of muscle function.
Since the heart is essentially a muscle, this explains the loss of aerobic capacity
with age. Women have a lower Vo2 max than men and usually have a higher
percentage of body fat. They also have less haemoglobin than men. Most of
the difference in work capacity is really due to differences in body size. In
general, women do appear to have lower upper body strength, controlling for
body size
Alcohol-:
Alcohol may increase cardiac output in sub maximal work, thereby reducing
cardiac efficiency.

Tobacco smoking-:
Tobacco smoke contains about 4% by volume carbon monoxide (CO). CO has
an affinity for haemoglobin (combining to form carboxyhaemoglobin) 200
times as powerful as that of oxygen. Smoking therefore reduces work capacity
by reducing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood.

Training-:Work capacity can be enhanced by physical training (to increase a

worker’s VO max) and job training in more efficient work methods (to obtain
more output per litre of oxygen consumed by the worker or to enable the
worker to safely exert larger forces by using better techniques). Specific
training regimes can be developed to strengthen particular parts of the
musculoskeletal system with the goal of improving performance or preventing
injury. Over a period of several months, the muscle fibres increase in size
owing to an increase in the number of myofibrils, and an increase in strength is
observed.

Nutritional status and general health-: A balanced diet is important to ensure

adequate amounts of necessary foodstuffs and to minimise the accumulation
of excess body fat. Excess body fat lowers a person’s relative Vo2 max as was
described above.

Food intake and food supplements-: The fact that the workers were paid on a
piece rate basis may explain the constant productivity, which was maintained
even at the expense of body weight loss. In such harsh situations as these,
workers may maintain their level of output at work but reduce the energy
devoted to leisure activities to compensate. When this happens, one of the
costs of work is reduced leisure activity.

Motivation-: Motivation is an extremely important determinant of work

capacity. Piece rate systems (where the worker is paid according to how much
is produced) may motivate workers to work at an increased rate but have been
associated with increased risk of accidents and of developing musculoskeletal
ailments.
Air pollution-: Air pollution may increase the resistance to air flow of the
respiratory airways and, in the long term, cause damage to the lungs,
permanently reducing the worker’s 208 Introduction to Ergonomics
capabilities.

Climatic factors-: Extreme environments can have significant effects on work

capacity.

Noise-: Noise is a stressor that can elevate the heart rate and reduce cardiac
efficiency.

Protective clothing and equipment-: Protective clothing and equipment can

affect work capacity in several ways, depending on the application. Heavy
clothing assemblies or devices that have to be carried will reduce work output
for the same level of effort in activities such as climbing or carrying. Protective
clothing assemblies that trap heat may increase heart rate for the same level
of effort, thus reducing work capacity or hastening fatigue. Breathing
equipment almost always imposes an additional physiological cost on the user
because of the resistance to air flow caused by pipes, valves, etc. The particular
cost depends on the application. In the nuclear power industry, the main
consideration is to protect workers from dust by providing a separate
breathing system for the provision of oxygen and the removal of carbon
dioxide.

Physiological mechanisms set limits to the worker’s capacity for physical work.
Some simple, quantitative techniques exist for predicting fatigue and
endurance and these can be use to specify the design of tools, tasks and work
practices. Physical stress and fatigue at work can be prevented using such
methods. Excessive work demands eventually lead to poor performance.

Bibliography
Introduction to Ergonomics
R.S. Bridger