Hotel housekeepers suffer persistent injuries

A NIOSH study released last week shows that hotel housekeepers suffer from persistent pain and injury.

The study, based on the records of more than 600 housekeeping employees at over 60 hotel properties over a recent seven year period, shows that 91 percent experienced workplace pain and faced an injury rate of 10.4 percent, compared with 5.6 percent for other hotel workers. Housekeepers faced a 61.4 percent higher risk of injury than other workers.

“Work like hotel room cleaning has been shown over and over again to increase the risk of musculoskeletal disorders in hotel housekeepers,” said Laura Punnett, an occupational epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts and one of the authors of the report. “The prevalence of lower back pain and related symptoms is unusually high.”

Hotel housekeeping workloads and the physical demands of the work have increased significantly in recent years as hotels have upgraded and introduced new room amenities, like luxury beds with heavy mattresses, triple sheeting and heavy duvets. “After the hotel put in the heavier beds and linens, the pain became more severe,” said Leticia Caballos, a housekeeper at Glendale Hilton in Los Angeles.