In the mid-1990s Matt Powell-Howard was in his early twenties, working as a process operator at a chemicals manufacturer. The work involved moving heavy drums and manually opening and closing valves that frequently stuck. "There was ageing plant, poor maintenance, poor training and poor supervision," Matt recalls. "It was a perfect storm for musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs)." Sure enough, Matt sustained damage to his lower back through heavy lifting. And he was far from being alone. He remembers attending a manual handling training session with his co-workers. "We had to go to the front of the room to look at a model of the spine," he says. "And every one of us was shuffling. We were all in pain standing looking at this plastic spine." That occasional handling training the operators received bore little relation to the loads they were shifting. "We were all taught to pick up a pot of paint," says Matt. "But we weren't handling pots of paint.
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