From: utzoo!decvax!duke!bcw
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: Health hazards of video terminals
Article-I.D.: duke.2753
Posted: Wed Nov 10 18:48:05 1982
Received: Fri Nov 12 03:34:54 1982

From:	Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University
Re:	Video screen illness

I suspect that most of the "health problems" associated with video screens
are actually more closely related to the general work conditions, though
there probably are a few CRT's out there which are hazardous, the world
being as large as it is.

For example, most people who do things like programming or other "creative"
things on CRT's aren't at the terminal 8 hours a day;  most of the people
who *do* work at CRT's 8 hours a day are data entry people and perhaps the
successors of the "office typing pool" pounding away at their word processors.
These jobs often have a considerable amount of work-related stress due to the
tighter control which management typically imposes on such "clerical" workers.
This alone would tend to produce a correlation between CRT usage and job-
related stress;  add to this the fact that the new users of CRT terminals
often find that the terminal tends to affect them psychologically by its
speed, and to make them try to speed up themselves, and you get a pretty
strong correlation.

Now this doesn't mean that there aren't "health hazards" in a more general
sense with a number of terminals.  I have seen some terminals which are
very badly designed from a visual standpoint (bad screen flicker making
them difficult to watch for any length of time and causing eyestrain;  odd
color screens;  small screens causing crowded characters;  bad orientation
for some viewers resulting in possible back or eye strain;  and so forth)
or from other standpoints (such as badly designed keyboards).  These are
not exactly the fault of CRT's as such;  I have also seen desks which are
badly designed in the same types of ways.

I suspect that the Canadian government is reacting to the symptom rather
than to the cause - not that the *real* problems don't need to be addressed,
but this ruling will probably not do the good that its supporters think
it will do.

			Bruce C. Wright @ Duke University