Each year:

• 40% of the population is affected by back pain (16 million)
• 0.5 million people have back pain every day of the year
• 119 million working days are lost
• Overall burden to industry = £5 billion
• 1.2 million people are affected by musculo-skeletal pain and 500,000 by work-related stress. (Statistics collated and disseminated by BackCare. TUC - the hidden workplace epidemics: back strain and RSI (December 1998)
• Only 17% of businesses had calculated the costs of back strain (and only 11% for RSI)
• Less than 31% provide any treatment for back strain (RSI 22%)
• 44% monitor number of workers with back strain (RSI 32%)
• 3% monitor days lost due to back strain (RSI 29%)