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OSHA Standards for the Construction Industry as of August 2009 
This book contains the occupational safety and health standards for the construction industry promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), effective July 1, 2009.
Workers who lift for a living need to take longer or more frequent breaks than they now do to avoid back injury, according to a new study at Ohio State University, published in the journal Clinical Biomechanics and reported by newswise.com. The study also says that people who are new on the job need to take breaks even more often than experienced workers, and that the risk of injury is higher at the end of a work shift. People who participated in the study, the first to examine what happens to muscle oxygenation over a full workday, lifted boxes onto conveyor belts for eight hours, while researchers measured the amount of oxygen that was reaching the muscles in their lower back.
The oxygen level indicates how hard the muscles are working, and whether they are becoming fatigued, explained William Marras, professor of industrial welding and systems engineering at Ohio State. His research and others' has shown that muscle fatigue is linked to back injury.
Despite the fact that the study participants were performing the same job at the same pace all day, their back muscles needed more oxygen as the day went on. Taking a half-hour lunch break helped their muscles recover from the morning's exertion, but once they started working again, their oxygen needs rose steeply and kept climbing throughout the afternoon. Two 15-minute breaks, one mid-morning and the other mid-afternoon, helped muscles recover a little, but not as much as the half-hour lunch. "This tells us two things," Marras said. "First, rest is good -- a half-hour break does a good job of helping muscles recover. But it also tells us that people are especially at risk for back injury at the end of the day, and the only way to counteract that effect is with more breaks as the day goes on."
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