NIOSH Mining Training Package


Keeping Knees Healthy in Restricted Work Spaces - A Training Package for Applications in Low-Seam Mining

2008

See also: NIOSH mining products
Audience: Mine Trainers and Health and Safety Professionals
Installation Notes: Download and extract the ZIP file to a folder on your hard disk. Start by opening the file called "READ ME.txt" in the root directory.
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ZIP
91.28 MB

healthy knee stickerMany challenges are faced by workers in lower-seam (42 inches or less) mines. The lower-seam heights confine mine workers to their knees as they perform their daily tasks such as installing roof bolts, delivering supplies, repairing belt, or cutting coal. Miners working in these lower seams often consider kneepads to be their only line of defense against knee injuries. However, healthy knees do not start and stop with kneepads. Other interventions such as changing postures, proper hygiene, and work station design may also be used to reduce mine workers' risks for developing knee injuries. Incorporating these and many other interventions into a mine worker's "way of life" is an important step to ensuring a long, healthy career and retirement. Keeping knees healthy is also a key aspect to reducing costs in low-seam mines as the industry battles rising health care costs, and training/recruitment of replacement workers is time-consuming and costly. Educating the workforce about the possible interventions to reduce knee injury risk is a primary objective for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) Pittsburgh Research Laboratory (PRL). Therefore, NIOSH researchers, along with industry and academia, developed a training package to educate the mining community about some possible interventions beyond kneepads that may be used to help decrease knee injury rates. Increased awareness and simple changes are the first steps to reducing knee injuries.

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Page last updated: October 22, 2008
Page last reviewed: October 6, 2008
Content Source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Mining Division