1.

INTRODUCTION Many studies have investigated work risks using ergonomics risk assessment
tools to prevent musculoskeletal disorders. The most common assessment tools include
REBA (rapid entire body assessment) [1], RULA (rapid upper limb assessment) [2], OWAS
(Ovako working posture analysis system) [3], PATH (posture, activity, tools, and handling)
[4], and OCRA (occupational repetitive action) [5]. However, these ergonomic assessment
tools focus on the posture of the upper rather than lower limbs, and do not apply well to the
agricultural, manufacturing, or construction sectors. Therefore, these tools are unable to
address the continued increased skeletal disease in Korea, particularly in agricultural
workers. Musculoskeletal disorders have steadily increased in Korea since 2003. The
decrease in economically active farm workers, aging of farm workers, and reduction of
population per farmhouse has brought about increased cultivated acreage per farmhouse.
Thus, with a decreasing labor force, significance increases in labor intensity have
eventuated. Consequently, the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders for agricultural,
forestry, and fishery workers (61.5%) was 2.5 times that of other sector workers (25.1%) [6].
The many studies produce various results according to the specific country, race, and age.
Even statistically significant results from one study may transfer to another from a different
country, due to anthropometric and cultural differences. Kirby et al. [7] showed that lower
limb postures affect the stability and mobility of the whole body, and, thus, affect the whole
working posture load. Gallagher et al. [8] showed that maximum achievable lifting load is
affected by lower limb posture. Kong et al. [9] developed the agricultural lower limb
assessment (ALLA) tool, a diverse and segmented ergonomics lower limb assessment tool
suitable for farm work for Koreans. ALLA is especially useful for lower limb burdening work,
and is based on results acquired through human body physiological experiments targeting
Koreans using lower limb postures not often observed in farm work. This study measured
the EMG of muscles, heart rate, and subjective discomfort to maintain each of 13 lower limb
postures. The risk level on working posture, exposed time, and considering both working
posture and exposed, time can be evaluated through four risk levels (1 = medium, 2 =
moderate, 3 = high, 4 = very high). The 13 ALLA lower limb postures can be categorized into:
postures resulting from the change of knee angles, squatting, and kneeling. Rick assessment
for each posture can be performed by analyzing the risk
2. 2.1 Posture selection This study selected 196 postures occurring in Korea’s agricultural tasks
(farm work) to verify the validity of lower limb assessment tools, including ALLA, RULA,
REBA, OWAS. An evaluation tool should be able to evaluate various postures precisely,
irrelevant of high or low risk. Therefore, this study selected the working postures as follows:
The risk of each crop was scored using a 100-point scale, based on the general health status
and fatigue, disease rate per crop, labor intensity, and hard body part per crop and survey
results on subjective symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders per crop from Kim [10]. This
study classified risks into four levels according to the score, and selected crops at different
working heights (under knee (bottom–knee), near waist (knee–breast), and above shoulder)
for each crop in each risk level. A total of ten crops were selected, as shown in Table 1, since
there is no crop corresponding to near waist working height at the very high and medium
risk levels. To identify the working postures for the ten selected crops, researchers visited
farms, and took photographs or referred to farm work reports [11–18].