(Occupational and Environmental Hygiene)

ii Non-neutral trunk posture and other related exposures have been linked to low back injuries and the reporting of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Methods to quantify trunk posture in occupational settings are essential for proper assessment of work tasks and the work environment. There are sophisticated methods that can measure trunk posture and three-dimensional trunk movement; however, these methods are costly, time consuming, have practical field limitations and require extensive data collection. This makes simplified, less accurate methods, such as observation, desirable for field work. Therefore, this work focused on examining a new data-logging inclinometer, the Virtual Corset ™ (VC), as a direct reading instrument that can measure trunk posture on par with a complex laboratory based method. The first study compared posture measurements of trunk motion from a commercially available optoelectronic motion capture system to a method employing the use of a torso mounted and pelvis mounted VC. The results indicated that the double-VC method accurately measured posture with high correlation and excellent agreement with the motion capture system. Th