Health & Safety lifting facts you should know!
Back pain is very expensive and costs businesses throughout the world a great deal due to absence for work.
Health care costs
- At least 5 million adults consult their GP annually concerning back pain. This leads to costs in primary care of £140.6 million.
- NHS physiotherapy costs are estimated at £150.6 million
- 10% of those complaining of back pain visited a complementary practitioner (osteopath, chiropractor, acupuncturist)
Private healthcare costs
- Physiotherapy - £100.5 million
- Osteopathy - £172.8 million
- Chiropractic - £69.1 million
- NHS Hospital costs (out patients, accident department, day-care and in-patients) are estimated at £512 million
Work related costs
- Back pain is the nation's leading cause of disability, with 1.1 million people disabled by it.
- Back pain disability has risen more quickly over recent years than any other common disability. It rose by 104% from 1986-1992 whilst other disability rose by 60%
- In 1997/8 over 119 million days were lost due to registered disability caused by back problems. This figure includes only people who claimed benefits as a result of their bad backs so the total estimate including short spells could be nearer to 180 million lost working days
- At any one time 430,000 people in the UK are receiving Social Security payments primarily for back pain
- One in eight (13%) unemployed people say that back pain is the reason they are not working
- True costs to Industry are difficult to ascertain as in a recent survey only 17% of businesses had calculated the costs of back strain
- Back pain is spread fairly evenly across the community in terms of age, sex and geography but occupation makes a difference. Over 1 million people have back pain or upper limb disorders
- Reported back pain is most common in those with skilled manual, partly skilled and unskilled jobs
Some occupations can cause back problems without involving injury. Among these are:
- Driving a motor vehicle. People who drive over 25,000 miles a year averaged just over 22 days a year off work with a bad back, compared with just over 3 days for low mileage drivers.
- Driving a train. Train drivers are twice as likely as HGV drivers to report low back pain
- Work involving intensive use of the telephone without headsets. 50% of office workers who use a telephone for at least two hours a day and also use a computer report neck pain and 31% lower back pain
- Being a supermarket cashier-57% experience lower back pain in a year
Chronic low back pain is often associated with psychological and social factors - often referred to as Yellow flags.
The issue of back pain in small firms has also been highlighted by the TUC. A survey on back strain in UK small business was carried out by the TUC, The Forum of Private Business and Backcare, to coincide with October's European Week for Health and Safety. The size of the small firms surveyed varied from less than 5 employees to more than a 100. The survey found that back strain is a serious problem in small firms with a major economic impact, and that where action is taken to deal with possible workplace causes, it is effective. The survey found that the main types of activity that cause back strain were lifting, standing and bending. According to this survey, back strain accounts for up to 13 million days of sick leave in small firms with the average small firm losing nearly 22 days of work a year due to back strain.
The survey found that where employers had risk assessed jobs that were causing back pain and changed the job to reduce the risk of further injury, the incidence of back strain came down in 41% of cases.
Department of Transport Statistics show that 2,434,000 light goods vehicles were currently licensed in 2003 (4 times the number of goods vehicles)
PDF guide about manual lifting [950Kb].
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