Effects of workers’ Body Mass Index and task conditions on exertion psychophysics during Vertical Handling Tasks

Obesity prevalence in the workforce is clearly increasing. Simultaneously, manual lifting/lowering loads, referred to as Vertical Handling Tasks (VHT) in this paper, are common in industries and services. Performing VHT exposes workers to physical overload, which can be measured using a psychophysical approach. Various risk factors can increase this overload, including individual factors such as workers' Body Mass Index (BMI).To study the...