On Thursday our exposure modelling research team here at CBF was awarded 2.2 million kroner (roughly 350,000 CDN). Marina Heiden is the lead researcher on this study, and I am a co-investigator on the grant. It is a nice acknowledgement that they chose our study out of all the applicants; there is typically a 10% funding rate at the Swedish National Council for Worklife and Social Science. It will also be exciting to plan this next study in a more concrete way now that we know we will be moving ahead… and it looks like there will be some more data collection to keep me busy in the Spring!
This study is called ‘Cost-efficient modelling of physical work load – an empirical study of postures in industry’ (Kostnadseffektiv modellering av fysisk arbetsbelastning – en empirisk studie av arbetsställningar i industrin) and will investigate the working postures of pulp mill workers at a variety of different machines and tasks in a paper mill. This will help us understand the exposures and risks encountered by these workers, but our main goal will be to find cheaper and better ways of measure posture exposures, so that future research and risk identification will be cheaper and easier (and therefore more likely to be completed successfully).