California serves as one of leading states in agricultural production in the entire country; it is attributed with planting, cultivating, and harvesting over 400 commodities worth billions of dollars in monetary value. The jobs associated in this industry pose a variety of risks in terms of injuries due to the laborious nature of the tasks performed in this field. Some of the most common injuries are a result of overexertion over prolonged periods. In order to better understand and identify potential ergonomic interventions to prevent these injuries, analysis of injury data is needed to pinpoint the factors that lead to the most prevalent and severe injuries. Utilizing over 6,000 workers’ compensation claims reported from 2005 – 2020 by agricultural farming businesses in California, prevalence of injuries, severity, and quantitative trends were characterized from the available data to focus on ergonomically related injuries due to factors such as repetitive motion, lifting, pushing/pulling, etc. Employee age, gender, tenure, nature of injury, injured part of body, and crop type were all analyzed in relation to the total incurred costs for reported claims. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, standardized residuals, contingency tables, and regression-modelling techniques were all used to analyze relationships between variables, characterize trends, and express the impact that the most significant of variables had on the total incurred costs. Results indicate that age, tenure, nature of injury and part of body were significantly related to monetary categories for incurred costs. Regression coefficients for age, gender, and part of body injured displayed significant relationships in impacting the log transformation of the total incurred costs for injuries. The results of this study will help in the efforts for better research, design, and implementation of risk reduction procedures and interventions in agriculture.

Ligaments play a crucial role in the musculoskeletal system in maintaining joint stability. Their primary function is to guide and restrain skeletal motion playing a vital role by forming a flexible skeletal joint between bones. When ligament injury occurs, a wound healing cascade begins with platelet plug formation and ends with tissue remodeling. Rat Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL) surgical and sub-maximal injury models were developed to examine footprint gait patterns, biochemical response, and histological tissue samples. Animals (n=150) were randomized to three treatments, Platelet Rich Fibrin (PRF) treatment, Meloxicam, a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), and untreated animals. We examined injury and treatment effects up to day twenty-eight post-injury. Results show that untreated animals’ gait patterns recovered to normal function within seven days after injury, while anti-inflammatory drugs slowed functional recovery until day fourteen. The PRF-treated group showed the fastest functional recovery on day five. Biochemical evaluation with enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA) of the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) showed a temporal effect with earlier peak VEGF concentration with PRF on day three compared to untreated animals peaking on day five and Meloxicam peaking on day seven. PRF reduces the time to functional recovery and correlates with early induction of VEGF. Even though NSAIDs manage the inflammatory response and pain, they retard functional recovery and VEGF induction. The histological assessment showed a temporal difference between day three and day twenty-eight regarding cellularity, collagen morphology and organization, and vascularity and set the stage to evaluate PRF and Meloxicam treatments on ligament healing. Establishing an animal model to study gross ligament injury and recovery sets the stage to study submaximal injury. Experiments have already designed an apparatus capable of producing submaximal injury. Initial studies have simulated mild ligamentous often experienced in different occupations requiring stooped posture work. Using a rodent model opens the opportunity to evaluate different approaches to improve ligament injury recovery and investigate various treatment methods.

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Hand-harvest work in wine grape vineyards is physically demanding and exposes workers to a variety of ergonomics risk factors. Analysis of these exposures together with data on reported work-related injuries points to the risk of back injury as a prevention priority, in particular the lifting and carrying of tubs of cut grapes (weighing up to 80 pounds) during harvest. Our study evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention — the use of a smaller picking tub — on the incidence of musculoskeletal symptoms among workers during two harvest seasons. Reducing the weight of the picking tub by 19% (to below 50 pounds) resulted in a five-fold reduction in workers’ post-season musculoskeletal symptom scores, without significant reductions in productivity.