Whole Body Vibration Assessment of Rice Combine Harvesting Operators in Phayao Province

Abstract

The agricultural machine technologies are important tool to support the conveniences of rice farmers. On the other hand, uncomfortable and occupational health problems are more affected to rice harvesting operators. This quasi-experimental research was conducted to evaluate whole body vibration (WBV) of rice combine harvesting operators in Phayao province. The rice mechanization was recruited to be the subject totally 6 harvesting machines with maximum capacity 2.5 and 2.7 tons. Total 4 work phases which are parking position, driving on rice fields surfaces, rice harvesting and threshing, and driving with full tank were collected and analyzed. The data was measured by carrying out vibration metering at the sites during November to December 2019 by WBV meter and recorded every 1 second. The vibrations at three orthogonal axes (X, Y, Z) were tested by descriptive statistic and compared the vibration by One-way ANOVA statistics.

The result showed that there were highly significant differences for all directions (X, Y, Z) of 4 work phases (p-value<0.001) and in vertical (Z) axis was the highest in vibration level. In addition, the vibration result of ANOVA was found that parking position, driving on rice fields surfaces, and driving with full tank were differences in X-Z axes and Y-Z axes including, rice harvesting, and threshing data was essentially different respectively (p-value< 0.05). Furthermore, WBV and 8-hour duration exposure of the operation on all 6 combine harvesting machines were compared and found that the vibration levels exceeded exposure action value (EAV) 83.33% and exposure limit value (ELV) 16.67%. As the result, the health surveillance and occupational risk management should be implemented by occupational health education including engineering design to reduce vibrations that may affect to the health of rice combine harvesting operators.