Occupational vibration in urban bus and influence on drivers lower limbs: A review

Abstract

Whole-body vibration occurs in many occupational activities, promoting discomfort in working environment and inducing a variety of psychophysical changes where consequences as a permanent dysfunction of certain parts of the organism may occur. The main goal of this review article is to find research works with the most reliable results relating whole-body vibrations in buses and, to compare them with the results of drivers lower limbs musculoskeletal disorders, which occurs as a result of many years exposure. PRISMA Statement Methodology was used and thereby 32 scientific databases were searched through where 3996 articles were found, of which 5 were included in this review. As leading standards for whole-body vibration analysis, ISO 2631-1 and ISO 2631-5 standards were considered. Furthermore, works including the European Directive 2002/ 44/ EC, where a daily action exposure to the whole-body vibrations is determined were also considered. All the results presented in this paper were compared with the aforesaid standards. Implementing the research methodology on the available databases, considering the problem of the impact of the vibration on the lower limbs, the found papers did not contain any information about the described problem.