Ergonomic Indicators and Physical Workload Risks in Food Production and Possibilities for Risk Prevention

The food industry is the most important and largest manufacturing industry in Latvia, producing almost a third of all manufacturing output. Employees in a food production enterprises are exposed to a variety of ergonomic risks: monotonous work movements that can be repeated up to 1000 times a day, overloads that exceeds 30 kg in lifting and moving operations, forced working postures, fast work pace. The aim of the study was to identify ergonomic indicators related to physical load for packers in one medium-sized company producing potato starch in Latvia. When summarizing the results of the survey on burden-lifting rates, it should be noted that, in a shift, 30% of packers lift the burden fr…