Work-Related Risks and Hazards for Garment Making Workers at Sewing Workstations: A Review.

Abstract

Awkwardly designed sewing workstations in garment manufacturing cause work-related risks and hazards that raise global health concerns for industrial sewing workers and the environment. In this review, therefore, most of the studies showed that work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are a major problem throughout the world. However, strategies to control this risk typically focus on redesigning sewing workstations to reduce the ergonomic hazards that workers experience during their work performance. Though the best way to have a safer workstation without any injuries during the work is to assess the risks and hazards of WMSD. The aim of this review study, therefore, is to assess work-related risks and hazards for garment-making workers at sewing workstations. Furthermore, there are three primary risk factors that are essentially physical in nature, such as forceful exertions, high task repetitions, and awkward postures. Besides, the most common hazards at the workstation are safety hazards, biological hazards, physical hazards, ergonomic hazards, chemical hazards, work and person hazards, fire hazards, and environmental hazards. In addition, there are many ways to reduce ergonomic risks and hazards that can help fit the sewing workstation to the worker. Additionally, solutions can be grouped into ten main categories, such as eliminating the risks and hazards, substituting the risks and hazards, engineering controls, visual and audible warnings, administrative controls, improving work policies and procedures, work practice controls, counteractive stretch breaks, a job rotation program, and providing personal protective equipment. This review therefore suggested a study on ergonomic hazards for making workers realize the importance of ergonomics for assessing potential ergonomic risks and hazards factors that existed around their sewing workstation. For ergonomic assessment methods, RULA and REBA are used to review studies from different researchers. In contrast, both survey-based methods show their significance and are suitable and accurate to assess the risk and hazards of ergonomics in the workers’ working environment. This review study, therefore, suggested both methods as the most popular and widely used observational ergonomic assessment tools in various industries and services. It is hoped that the review and discussion can inspire more researchers to take part in this present review study.

Keywords: Garments industry, RULA, Ergonomic hazards, WMSD, REBA.

DOI: 10.7176/ISDE/14-1-06

Publication date: June 30^th 2024