Posture Analyses and Biomechanical Evaluation of Urban Pruning Activities

Abstract

The pruning of urban trees is one of the practices used to adapt the projections of the branches to the inserted environment. The objective of this study was to analyze biomechanical factors such as posture and weight management in manual urban pruning activities in the city of Patos - Paraíba. The research was carried out with the employees responsible for the pruning activity of trees. For the posture analysis, the was use a photographic camera, followed by the movements and positions in each activity performed and then analyzed each shoot. The video was performed with the monitoring of the movements of the profile with the intention of observing the joints at the moment of work. For the biomechanical analysis, we used the weighing of the tools used, using a precision scale. The results showed that the highest percentage of the postures adopted in urban pruning activities, was considered adequate according to the OWAS method, obtaining a higher percentage of classes 1 and 2. However, the drag activity was the only classified in the class that requires measures as soon as possible and that risk may occur in the spine, so that corrective measures are necessary to implement it. Among all the activities analyzed, the knee and ankle joints presented a percentage of compression, due to the worker maintaining the flexed legs most of the time.