Study on discomfort and musculoskeletal disorders of tractor drivers and the role of respective affecting factors

Ergonomic design of workspace with considering the physical and physiological aspects, is expected to result in increasing the driver's satisfaction and decreasing undesired events. Driving the tractor induces vibrations and rotations to the driver's body which can lead to pain in the body joints. Therefore, a self-declaration questionnaire was designed and filled by 1200 tractor drivers. This questioner included three sections of personal and occupational information and the filed operations performed by the driver. After Collecting and classifying the information extracted from the questionnaire was analyzed with independent t and Chi-square tests. It was indicated that drivers had experienced pain in head and neck (39%), knee (37%), hips, arms and hands (29%), shoulders (28%), upper torso (26%), legs and ankles (25%), lower torso and thighs (24%) and in general, approximately 72% of the drivers had at least one or more than one organ feeling pain. Feeling discomfort after doing various agricultural operations caused increases in pain of some of joints related to the type of agricultural operation. Tillage operations showed a direct role in joint problems at a confidence level of 90%. The two-year study showed that the repetition of these disorders during the sequential years, has led to disability or irrecoverable disorders of joints