furuta (11/10/82)
Could someone please tell me how to get a copy of the Canadian Government's VDT report which was just summarized to the net. Alternately, identifying the source of the information would be helpful. Thanks --Rick ...decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!uw-june!furuta (uucp) ...ucbvax!lbl-unix!uw-beaver!uw-june!furuta or Furuta@Washington (ARPAnet)
bcw (11/11/82)
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