I am a supervisor in an automotive factory. Safety is a major concern. Lifting is kept to a minimum with hydraulic lifts and other equipment. But even so, back pain from lifting remains our number one problem. We have tried to keep records and analyze who is at risk — the women? short workers? tall workers? overweight workers? We just can’t seem to find the answer. Does anyone else have any helpful information?

Low back pain in the working population accounts for a large portion of sick leave, lost wages, lost productivity, and high medical costs. Different studies have been done looking at different risk factors.

But it’s difficult to analyze all the various possible reasons why workers experience back pain while lifting. Besides the obvious (lifting a heavy object), there may be twisting, bending, or awkward postures involved. Age and gender (male versus female) could be possible factors. Is it possible that the back pain would have happened anyway and it was just noticed for the first time while lifting?

And what about the size of the object, whether the object was being picked up or lifted overhead, use of handles and the distance the object was carried after lifting. What about factors like which shift the worker was on when the injury occurred (day, evenings, nights) or when during the shift the pain started (early, mid, late)?

Recently, epidemiologists from seven different medical research institutions in Canada, reviewed studies already published in this area (cause of low back pain in the work place). Epidemiologists are researchers who collect data over time and look for trends.

In this study, they searched various medical libraries, health journals, and even unpublished reports. They were able to come up with 2,766 different studies related to these questions. They used specific search terms such as low back pain, occupational setting, work place, and lifting to find what they were looking for.

They were unable to pinpoint one specific risk factor (or even a group of interrelated factors) that were linked with low back pain. It’s possible that there’s one (and only one) risk factor (like lifting heavy objects) but there could also be a group of factors that when present at the same time lead to an increased risk of low back pain.

The evidence to support lifting as a direct cause of low back pain in the work setting just isn’t there yet. It may be a matter of future research being designed so that data from more of the smaller studies can be combined (pooled) to yield statistically significant findings. Until that happens, there isn’t a known answer to your question.