There’s plenty of information out there about ergonomics at the workplace. Unfortunately, much of the information and many of the suggestions revolve around controlled environments, such as enclosed factories. But at a pool, no matter what stage of completion, things are constantly changing.
That challenge presented itself to Dain Murray when he took his expertise from a factory to the pool industry.
“In a factory … the standard was to position all your materials below the shoulders, above the knees and inside the frame of your body,” says the safety director for Burkett’s Pool Plastering, a plaster and renovation firm in Ripon, Calif. “So you put [materials] at waist level, and the nail gun is in a cradle so you don’t have to go to the ground.”
But those measures have limited benefit to contractors and service techs working on a pool/spa site. “... It’s not something where you can set things up or set somebody up so they only make movements that are ergonomically easy and pleasant,” Murray explains.
The physical position changes to suit the pool’s contours. His company’s crews will trowel perched up on cleats and bending down for extended periods when finishing the floor. Over time, the awkward positions and repetitive motion of troweling and other tasks can have an impact on elbows, ankles, knees and shoulders.
Service technicians face the same risks when repetitively squatting to test water, work on skimmers, brush pools and other activities that require reaching and squatting.
“Just leaning over and taking out skimmer baskets,” says Lauren Broom, an educational consultant and owner of Space Coast Pool School, in Palm Bay, Fla. “It’s the number of times you do a task that will make it an ergonomic issue. ”
To help prevent injuries caused by repetition and strain, practice the following:
Make stretching and warming up a routine part of the job.
You can’t necessarily control the exact environment in which you’ll work, but you can prepare for on-the-job contortions and repetitions.
“That leaves us with measures such as warm-up and stretching, and being in the best physical condition that we can,” Murray says.
This becomes especially important if you’ve been sitting in a vehicle for long periods getting to the job.
Look for stretches designed to help combat repetitive motion injuries, and stretches focused on the back, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, and other areas that endure strain or repetitive movement.
Burkett’s trains and encourages its staff to perform stretches provided by a workplace safety app it subscribes to.
Strive for the ideal.
When possible, it’s ideal to position your work below your shoulders, above your knees and inside your body frame. You want to work as close to your center as possible for stability, minimizing the length of your reach.
Wrists should be held in a neutral position, not bent for long periods. Grasp with the whole hand, if possible, rather than holding an item with your fingers or in a pinching position.
With this knowledge, set yourself up for success in your controlled environments.
In the warehouse, yard, store, or truck, set materials and tools in places that allow you to work in the safe zone — between your shoulders and knees, and inside the frame of your body.
Plasterers, for instance, can place heavy bags of plaster, pigment and pebbles so they fall in the safe zone when it comes time to move them or empty them into the mixer.
In the field, try to work within this safe zone — don’t reach too far or dip too low if it can be avoided.
Take breaks.
Of course, there’s only one sure bet for avoiding repetitive motion injuries — remove repetition from the equation.
That often isn’t possible. However, you can take measures to reduce vulnerability. Motions involving hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders and neck become risky when repeated for more than two hours per day, Broom says. Intense keying can lead to injury if regularly performed more than four hours per day.
Reduce the number of times you repeat a motion in a certain period. Try changing tasks for a moment — maybe switching off with somebody else to give both your bodies a break from the specific motion, Broom suggests. Alternate which hand does the job, if possible. Take stretch breaks. Do what you can to stagger the repetitive work over the course of the day rather than performing it all at once.
Hit the right way.
Your body is a tool, but only to a certain extent. Sometimes you may need your hand to act like a hammer. If possible, use an actual hammer. But if that’s not available, create that impact in a way that minimizes hazard.
“When something won’t move or budge, [sometimes we] punch it with our palm,” Murray explains. “But that’s horrible for your carpal tunnel. Do it with a fist or get a hammer. It’s not going to catch up with you when you’re 25, but someday that will inflame the tissues in your wrist, and you’ll have carpal tunnel.”
Don’t reach — Reposition.
Whenever possible, avoid reaching too far from the center of your body. If you can, reposition yourself so that you can work as close to your body as possible and avoid awkward positions that put strain on your joints.
If this means moving a ladder or scaffolding, so be it. Murray offers a plastering example: “Don’t lean way off the ladder to trowel something that could be better troweled by relocating the ladder.”
Use equipment when you can.
To help prevent injury from strain, use hauling equipment when available.
On the plastering side, this becomes especially important for demolition crews, who must remove the chipped plaster and concrete from yards, transferring it from the pool to the truck before driving it away.
In the past, Burkett’s would use wheelbarrows for this task, creating a ramp from the ground to the truck bed. But crews would have to push it up onto the bed. Now, the trucks come with lift gates so the chipped concrete can be mechanically elevated to the bed from the ground.
Or crews can unload wheelbarrows of debris into the bucket of a skid steer, which transfers it into the truck.
For service techs, manufacturers are beginning to design and offer various carts and dollies to help move equipment, hoses, and the like to the site. This can especially prove helpful with large bags of chemical and material that get particularly awkward to lift and carry. Taking advantage of those can help reduce bending, lifting and other risky movements on the site.
Tools also are available to help with other tasks that require a lot of bending over, such as removing skimmer baskets and collecting water test samples.
“It helps ergonomically keep your back straight as much as possible, without twists and turns,” Broom says of the skimmer basket tool. “I’ve had some pool techs who are cleaning 23 residential pools per day. That’s a lot of times they’re bending over to pick up skimmer baskets. Add onto that the commercial pools that have multiple skimmer baskets.”
Also, choose the right tools and equipment. Service techs, for instance, should equip themselves with poles long enough to reach the deepest depth found on their route, Broom says.
Managing Safety
When it comes to safety, training constitutes a major responsibility for managers. Some approaches will help the messages stick.
Train in short, digestible bites — say, 15-minutes at a safety meeting — addressing one or two practices at a time, Broom says.
Always document the training, she adds. An ergonomic injury could result in a complaint being filed, at which point the applicable government agency will investigate. Record the kind of training that took place, date and time, a short description, along with all employees who attended. “You can’t just say, ‘I did the training,’” Broom says.
But one of the biggest challenges comes not from properly teaching the adaptations that need to be made, but working against a mindset seen in many construction-related fields. As a trainer, Broom hears it all the time: “‘Oh, it’s never happened to me. I don’t need to worry about it,’” she says, paraphrasing what she’s heard more often than she’d like to admit. “Or they do get hurt but keep plowing through, doing their job. It’s going to get worse if it’s not addressed. That’s the culture that even I battle as an OSHA trainer.”
To help get through, personalize the training so they’ll take it seriously. Provide examples of injuries that can and do occur on pool and spa sites, rather than relying on examples from other industries, like you’ll find in generic safety training materials. That brings the issue closer to home and removes that, “It can’t happen to me” mentality.
Broom does this in her OSHA training geared to the pool/spa industry. “They’re not going to care if something happened to an apartment guy down the road,” she says.
Besides proper training, Murray likes to get to the sites from time to time to watch the crews at work. If he sees somebody working in a way that could lead to injury, he’ll comment on it, especially if he knows they’ve had pains in that area. But he has to walk a fine line.
“It’s counter productive to be the safety police person,” he says. “People will hide from you. I think the best approach is the helpful, ‘Let’s get this done together; I don’t want you to get hurt.’”
