Assessment of Physical Workload and Maximum Working Capacity among Workers of Metallurgy Factories Processing Aluminum in Howrah District of West Bengal

Background: Assessing physical workload is the most important step in deciding whether the workload is high and adopting appropriate control strategies to reduce physical workload. Objective: To assess physical workload, maximum working capacity (MWC), and relative load (RL) of study participants engaged in manual material handling. Methods and Materials: A cross-sectional observational descriptive study was conducted in two aluminum processing metallurgy factories in the Howrah district of the Indian state of West Bengal. The sample size for the proposed research work was 424 workers. Data was collected on a predesigned and pretested questionnaire and was subsequently analyzed by using a suitable statistical package. Results: Mean age of the workers was 45.46 ± 10.25 years. Most of the (28.54%) respondents had completed the Primary level of education. The majority of respondents were from the upper middle class (34.67%). Most of the workers (63.44%) were engaged in “workers doing other types of job,” whereas 12.03% workers were operating machines, and 7.31% workers were doing manual material handling. The majority of the workers (48.39%) were manual material handlers who had moderate physical workload, and 32.26% and 19.35% manual material handlers had heavy and light physical workload, respectively. Conclusion: About one-third of the manual handlers of the present study were subjected to RL beyond the acceptable limit because of disproportionate physical workload and MWC.