Association between Individual, Physical, and Organisational Risk Factors and Low Back Symptoms Among Karawang Industrial-Indonesia Manufacturing Workers

Abstract

Low back symptoms (LBS) is an important public health problem in all industrialised countries [1]. Approximately 80% of adults experience at least one episode of back symptoms during their lifetime [2]- [4]. In Asia, a study in Japan indicated that one-month prevalence and lifetime prevalence of LBS are approximated to be 35.7% and 83.4%, respectively [5]. In Indonesia, the reported prevalence of LBS is more than onethird (38.4%) among the productive-age population in Jatinangor, West Java [6]. Various individual and physical factors increase the risk of LBS in workers [7]-[10]. Individual risk factors for workers such as age [3], [11], [12], gender [4], [11], [12], body mass index (BMI) [2], [10]-[15], marital status [16], [17], smoking [3], [18], regular exercise [3], [10], [19], years as an operator/worker [16], and education level [3], [20], [21] have been reported to have a significant association with a number of reported cases of LBS. Meanwhile, several studies have reported that physical factors [15] include lifting [7], [22], [23] and frequency lifting [23], [24] increase the risk of LBS. Previous studies also investigated organisational risk factors such as employment status [21], night shift [21], daily working [16], and weekly working [3].