Many epidemiological studies of the relation between work and disease use information on work history obtained by interview from the study subjects. A validation study was undertaken to evaluate the accuracy of this information collected from 100 workers in a shipbuilding industry. The information furnished by the workers was compared with that present in the company's registers. The work history (job titles and starting dates) was relatively accurate and the validity varied with the number of events to declare and with their duration; it also depended on the type of information and the precision required. histories reconstructed from interviews with workers. The validity of such information is not well documented. The few studies on the validity of job histories have compared workers' interview data with the corresponding information obtained by interviewing employers.2 " Only one study attempted to confirm the employers' name provided by employees using an objective source of information, a government pension plan registry.4 In the present study workers were interviewed about their occupational history during their employment at a single company. The validity of these data was assessed using the information recorded in the company registers as a reference. MethodsThe study population consisted of 100 male employees in a shipbuilding yard. This company was chosen because the employer kept a detailed administrative work record for each employee and because workers were mobile within the company and could have held several jobs at various times during their employment. One hundred and fifty men with at least five

La ergonomía es una multidisciplina preocupada de la adaptación del trabajo al hombre. Su desarrollo es reciente en nuestro medio, existiendo una gran necesidad de que los profesionales del área de la salud incorporen criterios ergonómicos en sus actividades, ya que en el mundo moderno existe un conjunto de patologías que pueden ser desencadenas o agravadas por el trabajo. En estos casos, los tratamientos no son efectivos si no se corrigen las causas que los generan. El artículo presenta una visión conceptual de ergonomía, sus objetivos, campos de acción y los aspectos fisiológicos, psicológicos, biomecánicos, ambientales y organizacionales que la sustentan, destacando su carácter multidisciplinario. Se analiza también sus proyecciones y su utilidad tanto en la adaptación de métodos tradicionales de trabajo como en las tecnologías del futuro. Palabras claves Palabras claves Palabras claves Palabras claves Palabras claves: Ergonomía, trabajadores de la salud, carga física, carga mental.

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The review first posits that sustainability principles could be helpful to improve the working conditions, and second, that an ergonomics approach provides information related with working conditions, organizations' problems and the needs of workers that would be helpful to create a sustainability workforce.

The range of sizes used in Chile for clothing comes from criteria developed in continental Europe, mainly the EN 13402 standard. Any standard adopted by a country should consider the anthropometric dimensions of the user population, particularly to discern the ratio of garments for different size. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to propose standards for the size of clothing based on anthropometric characteristics of a sample of Chilean miners. The study was conducted in 447 male workers. The age and body weight were measured in each workers as well as their percentage of body fat. Anthropometric measurements for garments were made according to the criteria of the European Community (EN 13402-1) and ISO (8559-1989). Body dimensions for the design of gloves, shoes, helmets and caps, clothes that cover the upper part of the body and clothes that cover the lower part were measured. The results obtained made it possible to establish the percentage of workers falling within the range of sizes that manufacturers consider as reference. One of the main conclusions of the study is the need to carefully consider a set of complementary anthropometric measures, which can help to improve the comfort of costumes, to the extent that the providers adapt their designs to the characteristics of Chilean workers.