Today, the increased sensitivity of society about human life has led to an escalation in prominence of the human dimension of occupational health and safety as well as its economic aspect. From an economic perspective, losses of time and money due to accidents can be compensated whereas human health cannot be restored. The working environment in the work place is, therefore, of great importance for identification and minimization of the risks that may originate from workers or the work itself. This study (a) determined the demographic characteristics of female forest nursery workers working in the forest nurseries in Trabzon-Of, Central district of Ordu and Tirebolu in Turkey, (b) evaluated the working postures of these workers during the main works in forest nurseries (diversion, seed screening, sapling planting by hand, cutting graft, seedlings removal by hand, sowing by machine, plucking grass with hand, mowing with anchor, laying seeding and cover material and lifting) by means of ergonomic risk assessment methods such as Rapid Entire Body Assessment Method (REBA), Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA), Quick Exposure Check Method (QEC) and Ovako Working Posture Analysis System (OWAS), and (c) compared and interpreted the risk scores. Low risk was detected in working with machines, manual weeding and liftingcarrying only in the OWAS method out of four methods implemented. As forest nursery work often requires crouching, sitting or bending positions, the RULA method, which yielded more sensitive results for upper extremities in the outcome of evaluation, was considered to be more appropriate to use.
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