Lower limb disorders (LLDs) affect the legs from hips to toes. The most common risk factors at work are:
About 20% of all work-related musculoskeletal disorders affect the lower limbs. In 2009/10 an estimated 94,000 people in Britain who had worked in the last 12 months suffered from an LLD caused or made worse by their work. Of these, an estimated 30,000 were new cases, which is about 100 out of every 100,000 workers in Britain.
HSE estimates that each case of LLD means a worker taking an average of 25 days off work; about 2.4 million working days were lost because of LLDs in 2009/10.
Research suggests that 50% of cases of surgically-treated knee osteoarthritis (OA) and 30% of surgically-treated hip OA were related to occupational factors.
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