Frequent and heavy lifting and handling can cause back injuries.
In 2004/2005, 35% of all the accidents reported by the UK Printing and Publishing Industries were manual handling related ( 413 accidents).
Manual handling accidents occur across a wide variety of operations in printers. A number of videos have been produced which illustrate some of the common tasks which may give rise to musculoskeletal injuries.The videos also provide examples of possible solutions to control the risks by the use of various lifting and handling aids.
The HSE have developed a number of manual handling risk assessment tools that can help employers to assess their own manual handling operations. It is important that employers identify high risk operations before deciding on what the most appropriate control solutions should be.