by 
Most industrial job sites require workers to have protective footwear in order to provide a measure of safety, but are all work boots created equally?
That’s what Fahad Adeniran, an undergraduate student in biomedical biology at Laurentian University, wanted to find out through his study on how footwear design impacts the safety of a worker that’s exposed to vibration while on the job.
There’s plenty of existing data about whole-body vibration, which is transmitted through seats or standing surfaces found in heavy equipment, or hand-arm vibration, caused by grinders or jackhammers. Both are defined and regulated under International Safety Standards (ISO).
What’s less common is research on foot-transmitted vibration, and that’s where Adeniran’s research comes in.
“Foot-transmitted vibration is essentially vibration that enters through the body from the feet while standing. Workers experience this usually on vibrating platforms or machinery,” he said during CROSHCOn 2026, a virtual research day hosted by the Centre for Research in Occupational Safety and Health at Laurentian University.
“Compared to hand-arm vibration, there’s actually currently no ISO standards in any capacity that evaluates footwear based on vibration attenuation (reduction).”
While most foot-transmitted vibration is harmless, Adeniran said, chronic exposure can cause minor nerve damage, leading to numbness, tingling and a loss of sensation.
Further exposure can lead to vasoconstriction — a narrowing of blood vessels in the extremities — which can reduce blood flow, increase blood pressure, and cause conditions such as vibration-induced white foot.
That then leads to muscle fatigue or pain, as well as micro-trauma to the muscles, which can result in reduced muscular endurance, affecting a person’s balance and causing problems with their gait, Adeniran added.
As well as impacting worker health, issues related to foot-transmitted vibration are a massive hit to the economy.
“This problem for foot-transmitted vibration, just occupational vibration exposure in general, affects millions of workers globally, with around 4 million workers exposed just in the U.S., and a cost of around $45 to $54 billion,” he said.
“It’s a pretty big problem, but just very quiet in the way it does it.”
Adeniran set out to compare how well various safety boots protect the wearer while exposed to vibration.
Outfitting 10 healthy recruits with sensors, accelerometers, and instrumented insoles, Adeniran exposed them to various amounts of vibration while standing atop CROSH’s vibration simulator, and then measured the results.
Participants were first tested barefoot as a control, and then in four types of boots: Oliver Poron, Terra 8 Gantry, Cofra Thermic, and Oliver. These were chosen so Adeniran could test a variety of real-world designs and materials.
“This variety allows us to test whether softer materials or maybe heavier materials, or maybe some more protective designs, are better at attenuation,” he said.
They used three levels of vibration — low, medium and high-risk — that were based on real field data from industrial and mining machinery, he added, and then he took measurements at the heel and at the toe.
What Adeniran found is that the work boots performed similarly, even at different vibration frequencies.
More transmission of vibration occurred in participants’ heels, which is a more direct point of contact compared to the toes, and there was less vibration while participants were barefoot than when they were wearing the boots.
“This tells us that the materials utilized in the boots have a tendency of amplifying the vibration within these regions compared to those that we see within the toe,” he said.
As to which boot was the best performer? That was inconclusive.
“There was actually no statistically meaningful differences in discomfort between each of the boots, meaning that no specific boot was more discomforting than the other,” he said.
That finding was backed up by participants, who reported very little discomfort across all conditions, he added. This created a “floor effect” that made it difficult to detect differences between boots.
Even though some clear trends occurred, Adeniran said, the sample size is too small to declare any one work boot superior.
Adeniran said this means statistical analysis and larger sample sizes are needed before any declarations can be made about footwear performance.
But, as the first in situ evaluation of foot-transmitted vibration using instrumented insoles, his research creates a baseline of information to build on.
“It provides some pretty quantitative data that is currently missing from footwear safety standards, and it has the potential implications for manufacturers, industry decision-makers and future CSA (Canadian Standards Association) and ISO updates,” Adeniran said. “This is a novel study that has some true impact in the future.”
