Intent on developing practical alternatives for agricultural work that frequently causes injuries, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have launched a new three-year agricultural ergonomics study. Ergonomics is the investigation of how the work environment can be engineered to minimize stress on the human body. The California Agricultural Ergonomic Intervention Project will focus on the state's nursery industry, which employees approximately 31,000 workers annually. Nursery work includes tasks similar to those found in both manufacturing and traditional field agriculture, and the nursery industry has a long-term, rather than seasonal, work force that will enable researchers to train workers and evaluate changes initiated by the study. The first year of the study will be funded by a $207,000 grant from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. "Our goal is not to replace workers through mechanization, but to modify their tasks and tools in order to prevent injury," said study director John A. Miles, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at UC Davis. "We also are confident that nursery owners and managers will realize savings through increased efficiencies and productivity." Agriculture has been rated as the nation's most hazardous industry, and new work-safety standards are pending both at the federal level and as part of the state's Workers Compensation Reform Act, according to Miles. Many of the new standards are expected to target cumulative trauma injuries to joints and the back, resulting from jobs that require extensive lifting and bending -- tasks that for centuries have been part of agriculture. During the first year of the new ergonomics study, researchers will use videotapes, computer analyses and worker interviews to identify the tasks in the nursery industry that pose the greatest risk of injury to workers. Consulting with nursery management, the researchers will then select two to four tasks to be modified. "For example, nursery workers transport plants by lifting large plant trays from the ground, which requires them to bend completely over to get their fingers under the trays," said Miles. "To modify that task, we might be able to do something as simple as putting handles on the plant trays, reducing by six inches the distance that workers must bend." Regardless of which modifications are suggested for the tasks or tools, researchers stress that the changes will have to be practical and efficient or they will not be accepted by workers or by nursery management. "And we expect that we will have to go in and change a job not just once, but perhaps 10 times, before we find what works best," said Miles, who has been doing similar work for several years in the citrus industry. He notes that the research team has been encouraged by the response from nursery industry leaders, who are eager to participate in the study. The researchers hope this project will be the catalyst for many ergonomic developments that will increase worker health and safety, and boost industry productivity throughout agriculture. "We are in a crucial position to serve California agriculture," said the study's associate director, James Meyers, an agricultural and environmental health specialist at UC Davis and at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. "I have no doubt that the results of this study will be directly applicable to other agricultural industries. Tools might have to be modified from one industry to another, but the principles will be adaptable." Collaborating with Meyers and Miles are John Kabashima, an environmental horticulture farm advisor at the UC South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine, Calif.; Julia Faucett, an assistant professor of occupational health nursing at UC San Francisco; and ergonomics expert Ira L. Janowitz from the UC Ergonomics Program.