The health hazards in your office
Like many other innovations, computers generated a great deal of
resistance at first. People raised concerns about the effects of radiation on
everything from their eyes, to their neck, shoulders, arms and back, even to
their reproductive fertility and pregnancy outcome. Headaches, eyestrain,
muscular tension, and suspicious clusters of miscarriages were widely reported.
However, studies which have addressed these concerns have failed to prove that
any measurable radiation, no matter how minimal, has been responsible for any
of the adverse effects reported.
Nevertheless, one cannot discount the increasing numbers of
dissatisfied and/or injured office workers: their discomfort and health problems
are very real. There is very little doubt that working with computers (with
emphasis on the actual work and not the computers themselves) causes or heavily
contributes to these problems.
Why ergonomics for the
computer users became so important?
The number of people working with computers is ever growing: some
estimate that soon they will account for more than half of the working
population, creating the biggest challenge for occupational health and safety.
What is even more alarming is the high number of complaints about discomforts
and injuries.
And, against all expectations, the wider application of ergonomic
principles is not dramatically alleviating the problems. This creates a new
challenge to convince computer operators and, as a matter of fact, all working
people that their own health and well-being depends as much, if not more, upon
their own actions rather than upon the institutionalized health care system.
Prevention through participation may be the right approach. In other words,
"the involvement of people in planning and controlling a significant
amount of their own work activities, with sufficient knowledge and power to
influence both processes and outcomes in order to achieve desirable
goals".
Let Ergonomicworks ( www.ergonomicworks.com
) educate you and help you about the hazards of working in computerized offices
as well as how to prevent the resulting discomfort and injury.
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