The Application of Spring Balancer for Hand Risk Reduction among Grinding Workers in a Thai Automobile Industry

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a spring balancer to reduce the risk of hand injury among the automobile industry workers who used the vibration tools. The study used a quasi-experimental research designs in which a single group of 20 participants who used the vibrating machines regularly were tested, given a spring balancer and then re-tested. The results showed that the occurrence of potentially harmful levels of vibration decreased significantly (p– value <0.05) after using the spring balancer; vibration on Z-axis with the frequencies of 100, 315, 800, and 1,000 Hz significantly decreased. In addition, it was found that the strength of hand muscles after using the spring balancer also increased significantly (p– value <0.05). In conclusion, this study suggests and recommends that the spring balancer should be universally implemented across the Thai automobile industries in order to reduce the risk of hand injury and increase the strength of a worker's hands.