Comparison of United States (NIOSH Lifting Guidelines) and European (ECSC Force Limits) recommendations for manual work limits.

In the early 1980's two different guidelines for manual lifting were established: the NIOSH Work Practices Guide for Manual Lifting and the European Coal and Steel Community's Force Limits in Manual Work. A comparison of the two guidelines indicates some discrepancies in their predictive capabilities and a significant nonlinear relationship between the two limits. These discrepancies may be explained by differences in respective predictive equations, assumptions and underlying concepts.