An Evaluation of Commercially Available Plastic Handled Knife Handles

Recently considerable attention has been paid to hand tool design which has been caused by a near epidemic level of cases of carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, tenosynovitis, and de Quervain's disease. Workers who use knives in meat packing are particularly susceptible to these occupational diseases. Five brands of meat packing knives with plastic handles were tested using a battery of 11 tests. These tests evaluated force capabilities using each of the knives. In addition, a standard cylindrical handle was tested as a control. The results indicated that the different handles performed differently depending upon the cutting orientation. This indicates that one handle cannot be chosen for all meat packing jobs. One handle, however, when evaluated using the ranks on all 11 tests is shown to be superior to the others tested.