This book focuses exclusively on ergonomics in the design and use of hand tools. Hand tools have been an integral supplement to the human hand since the beginning of civilization. Recently, they have been pinpointed as a prominent cause of workplace disease. Cumulative Trauma Disorders such as Tendonitus, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and Raynaud's Syndrome are caused by the specialization of motion employed when using a screw driver, the shock to the hand and wrist when a hammer strikes a nail, or the vibration of a power saw. Ergonomics and Safety in Hand Tool Design explores the relationship between Biomechanics, Safety, and Ergonomics allowing the reader to recognize, evaluate, and control ergonomic risk factors and improve hand tool design. After a history of hand tool use and design, the book is broken down by the various disciplines as they apply to hand tools, taking a broad approach. The author gives special attention to safe design and use, illustrated with detailed diagrams. The text serves as a guide to the human factors in safety and ergonomics for safety professionals.

The International Ergonomics Association (IEA) is currently developing standards for Ergonomic Quality in Design (EQUID) which primarily intends to promote ergonomics principles and the adaptation of a process approach for the development of products, work systems and services. It is important to assess the ergonomic quality of products, hand-held tools and computer input devices through working processes that represent reality. Well-designed working tools can be expected to reduce or eliminate fatigue, discomfort, accidents and health problems and they can lead to improvements in productivity and quality. Furthermore, absenteeism, job turnover and training costs can positively be influenced by the working tools and the environment. Not all these short-term and long-term issues of working tools can be quantified in pragmatically oriented ergonomic research approaches. But multi-channel electromyography, which enables the measurement of the physiological costs of the muscles involved in handling tools during standardized working tests, and subjective assessments of experienced subjects enable a reliable insight in the essential ergonomic criteria of working tools and products. In this respect it is advantageous to provide a test procedure, in which working tests can be carried out alternating both with test objects and reference models.

As the ergonomic aspect of many problems facing the industry today attracts more attention from the management, providing scientific knowledge and the know-how to solve such problems is becoming increasingly more important. The impetus for this book originated from the pressing need to make the state-of-the-art ergonomic information on workspace, equipment and tool design available to practising ergonomists, safety specialists, engineering designers, and business and technical managers.The book reinforces the notion that ergonomic data should be explicitly integrated in the design of a system, and should become an indispensable part of the overall design process in production engineering, on an equal basis with such activities as mechanical component design, quality assurance, maintenance, inspection, etc. The focus is on selected ergonomic data for workspace, equipment and tool design, with special emphasis on the practical aspects of applying the available information to specific problem areas.