representing about 25 percent of all forklift-related deaths, cites the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). In the United States, 1,021 workers died from traumatic injuries suffered in forklift-related incidents between 1980 and 1994. In 2004, some 3,700 workers were injured from overexertion in lifting - by far the biggest category of warehouse injury type. In addition, 1,570 workers were struck by an object, and 5,030 workers were hurt by containers of some sort. The cost of these injuries - in both human and monetary terms - is staggering. The only way to improve these statistics is to implement and enforce an effective safety program, which should be an essential part of any warehouse operation.

Back and shoulder are the most frequent types of injuries in the warehouse, representing 40 to 50 percent of all injury claims, according to Wayne Maynard, product director, ergonomics and tribology (slips and falls), at the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, Boston. For this reason, any warehouse safety program

should focus considerable attention on improving manual materials handling techniques and practices, such as lifting, lowering, pushing, pulling, and carrying. "Most manual handling claims are filed by operations that rely heavily on manual order picking," explains Ted Braun, product director, manufacturing technology, Liberty Mutual. "This includes pallet handling and broken case picking -- activities that require a lot of human involvement with workers moving up and down warehouse aisles on powered lift trucks, scanning bins, grasping items, and moving them to pallets." "When workers handle too much weight, perform a task too often or outside the optimum mid-level range, move an object too far, or perform any combination of those activities, the

risk of low back pain rises," Maynard adds. Warehouses can reduce low back injuries by redesigning the workplace and manual tasks performed to minimize bending, reaching and twisting; weights and forces; and frequency of handling and rehandling. Additionally, good workplace design permits employees with low back pain to remain on the job or to return to work sooner.

Such workplace and task redesign falls under the heading of ergonomics. "The point of ergonomics in the warehouse is to minimize bending and reaching," notes Maynard. "Doing so reduces the risk of back injuries, and at the same time improves pick rates." Locating fast - moving products between knuckle and shoulder height, for example, eliminates bending, and allows workers to get close to the product and transfer it to the pallet in less time, with less strain on the back. "Ergonomics is poorly understood," Braun insists. "The controversy surrounding the Occupational Safety & Health Administration's (OSHA) development of ergonomics standards and guidelines, unveiled in 2002, gave ergonomics a bad name. "Warehouses sometimes define ergonomics as a huge black hole into which they pour money. That's just false. Good ergonomics can prevent injuries in the first place, and can facilitate return to work after an injury."

The second most important warehousing activity to address in a safety program is mechanical material handling. Although the frequency of being struck or injured by industrial lift trucks or other handling equipment is significantly less than overexertion, the severity of injury is much greater. "An accident can be life changing or even fatal," Braun says. OSHA maintains a scoring system for warehouse injury incident rates. According to this rating system, a facility with an average safety record receives a score of 10. "Best-in-class companies have an injury incidence score of less than 2," says Patrick Byrnes, president, Supply Chain Partners, Alpharetta, Ga. "This means that the average warehouse has 10 times the incident rate of the best companies." But having a low OSHA injury score can be deceiving. "One major U.S. corporation, for example, had an injury reporting score of 1.7," Byrnes says. "While this score is outstanding, it still means that eight people died in its warehouses. So don't let the numbers fool you." Many companies believe if they conform to the OSHA requirements for training and certifying lift truck operators, all will be fine. OSHA's industrial truck operator training rule [29 CFR 1910.178(l)], which took effect March 1, 1999, requires operator training and licensing, as well as periodic evaluations of operator performance.