Tea is one of the most popular three beverages all over the world. The total production quantity or the average personal consumption of tea increases gradually nowadays, according to the international statistics from the United Nations. In Taiwan, there exist statistically about 6,000 tea manufacturing factories, resulting in over 50,000 workers of the total labor population in the tea manufacturing industry. However, most of the tea workers do not have only the concept of occupational health and safety, but also the knowledge of self-protection in the work.

All the tea manufacturing processes, including tea plantation, tea plucking, tea processing procedures and so on are subjected to the Taiwan Labor Safety and Health Act. Workers in the tea manufacturing industry are likely exposed to a variety of occupational health and safety hazards, including pesticides exposure, hand plucking, high-temperature and mechanical cutting and vibration injuries, ergonomic hazards, muscle skeleton disorder, and so on. Therefore, investigation of the occupational hazards for the tea manufacturing worker is important and valuable.

We have basically investigated the potential physical and ergonomic hazards factors and analyze the severity in the tea manufacturing processes by finishing 32 spot coverage and 346 questionnaire surveys.

The finding indicates that the percentages of tiredness, muscle skeleton ache and disorder, hot harzard are 53.5%, 52.04% and 49.5%, respectively. The top three disorders of muscle skeleton follow the order: malleolus (80.64%)> buttocks (78.9%)> upper dorsum (73.41%).