Occupational health and safety
Overexertion
Injury caused by excessive physical effort — lifting, pushing, pulling or carrying — a leading category of workplace injury worldwide.
Definition
Overexertion refers to injuries and musculoskeletal disorders resulting from excessive physical effort, such as lifting, carrying, pushing or pulling loads beyond safe capacity, or from repetitive exertion. It is consistently one of the largest categories of non-fatal workplace injury in official statistics and a major cause of lost workdays and compensation costs.
References
overexertion as leading injury category
MSD burden linked to physical exertion
Overview
What it means
Overexertion injuries concentrate in manual handling work — logistics, construction, healthcare, agriculture — and are the primary driver of work-related musculoskeletal disorders such as back injuries. They are preventable through ergonomic design, mechanical aids and safe lifting practice.
How it is used
OHS regulators and insurers classify injuries by event type, with overexertion tracked separately (e. g. , by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics); the NIOSH lifting equation is a standard tool for assessing lifting risk.
Why it matters
Overexertion represents a large, preventable share of the global burden of work-related ill health, making manual handling controls one of the highest-value safety interventions.
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