ABSTRACT
The fi rst attempt to introduce ergonomics in Chile started in 1965 at the National Institute of Occupational Health in Santiago, the capital of the country. This was partly motivated by a legal decree which allowed workers to be pensioned one year earlier for every fi ve years of involvement in heavy manual work. In those days, there was very little knowledge on how to differentiate the intensity of work, particularly aspects related to physiological workload and heat exposure. Dr. Hugo Donoso, medical doctor and physiologist, was the fi rst in the country to develop studies to establish objective criteria to qualify the intensity of work. Although his name is not very often quoted, it is fair to say that Dr. Donoso is the real father of ergonomics in Chile. Methods to evaluate the physiological workload were well developed, but he and his group found that it was not enough to determine only if work was heavy or not, as a worker who may have been pensioned early would still have had to endure 30-35 years of heavy or extremely heavy work. Hence, the idea to reduce the workload according to the capacities and limitations of Chilean laborers was identifi ed as a very important goal. Therefore in 1968, Professor Nils Lundgren, a Swedish Medical Doctor and Ergonomist, was invited to Chile as a World Health Organization consultant in ergonomics. He spent four months in the country carrying out applied research and teaching at the National Institute of Occupational Health. The fi eld work organized by Donoso, Lundgren, and a multidisciplinary team of young scientists was a real example of good research, and many of the methods introduced in those days are still in use (see Donoso et al., 1971; Apud et al., 1972). After Professor Lundgren left Chile, a research group
was organized to continue his pioneer work and a few young scientists went abroad to study ergonomics, mainly in Sweden, England, and France.
