According to the Labour Force Survey carried out each quarter by the Office of National Statistics, there are around 60,000 manual handling injuries per year in UK workplaces, although reports from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) indicate that these are not always reportable or reported. Those that are don’t just come from lifting and shifting heavy boxes, which is often what people associate with manual handling accidents.
Other Types of Manual Handling Injury
The HSE statistics for the year 2010/11 indicate that around a third of all reported accidents were handling related, and give a breakdown of these types of accident and injury. In that year, incidents involving lifting or putting down loads only made up 26% of the total reported, while pushing or pulling accounted for 17%, and carrying only 5%.
Other injuries included those to hands and arms which could be cut by sharp protrusions or coarse material. Trapped fingers are also included in the 12% that this category makes up.
Sprains and strains in all areas of the body are listed as 11% of the total. These can be caused by all kinds of manual handling activities, but are listed separately, so it is not known whether the handling concerned is of goods or people.
The report does mention people handling though. Moving, lifting or supporting people accounts for 10%, while moving people with handling equipment adds another 2%. Those who are prone to these kind of injuries usually work in the health or social care sectors.
Manual Handling Training for All Eventualities
The final 19% is in a catch-all category of handling, lifting or carrying, in unknown or unspecified ways, but it does seem that the usual perception of manual handling accidents can be only around half of the possibilities.
Personnel trained by Alistair Bromhead Limited, or by a trainer who has been qualified by an Alistair Bromhead course, will be able to recognise all kinds of manual handling risks. Making relatively small investments in educating your staff in manual handling courses to be able to understand and mitigate the risks can keep them safe and save all the costs of lost work days, not to mention claims from injured people.