By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Rules to protect workers from musculoskeletal injuries are effective and save employers money, but companies are unlikely to implement such measures on their own, a new study out in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine shows.

"It is clear that ergonomics interventions can work. The evidence is pretty clear, though there is a range, that you can get around a 50% reduction in workers compensation claims and costs," Michael Foley of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries in Olympia, Washington, told Reuters Health.

Washington State adopted an ergonomics law in 2000 designed to prevent workers from developing musculoskeletal injuries such as back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome. These injuries are the leading cause of workers compensation claims.

"The impacts on workers are very, very severe, ranging from a few weeks of lost work to, in many cases, permanent loss of productive capacity and earning power," Foley noted.

The new law required employers to assess their workplaces for risk and reduce any exposures that could cause musculoskeletal injuries -- for example carrying a load of 30 or more pounds for a distance of seven feet or longer, using the hand or knee as a hammer, or using vibrating tools.

The law was gradually phased in, with the largest and riskiest employers first, beginning in 2000. But in late 2003, an industry-funded voter initiative repealed the rule.

This offered a unique opportunity to look at what happens when such rules are implemented, and what happens when they go away, Foley said in an interview. To do so, he and his colleagues analyzed surveys of over 5,000 workplaces from 2001, 2003 and 2005, comparing them to a survey done in 1998 before implementation of the law.

From 1998 to 2003, Foley and his team found, the number of reported hazardous exposures declined in the most dangerous industries, such as residential building construction, concrete work, sawmills and planing mills, and nursing and personal care facilities, while the number of employers that reported implementing measures to reduce such exposures increased from 1998 to 2001.

After 2003, however, hazard exposures increased, and the increase in employers taking steps to protect workers "was reversed," the researchers found.

"The large employers in the highest-hazard industries were well on the way to reducing hazards by 2003 when the rule was repealed," Foley and his colleagues note in their report. "Likewise, it is evident that hazard reduction was no longer a priority once the threat of enforcement was gone."

At present, Foley noted, California is the only state that has any type of ergonomics law in place, and it does not require employers to take steps to prevent injuries, but instead requires them to act after such injuries occur.

SOURCE: American Journal of Industrial Medicine, January 2009.

Related MedlinePlus Pages:

• Ergonomics
• Occupational Health