Monday, October 15, 2001		Article

Getting on users’ nerves
Sudhir Kumar

OLD rusty typewriters may have been replaced by sleek and gleaming computers, allowing your fingers to fly across the keyboard at a phenomenal speed of 240 strokes a minute.

But you may be courting a serious neurological disorder in the process, besides impairing your vision, warn doctors.

As advanced technologies breed sophisticated maladies, more and more white-collar professionals, assembly line workers and students are not only disappearing behind thick glasses but also experiencing numbness in fingers and shooting pain in shoulder blades.

Doctors have given it the name of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS).

While the ultra-violet rays that bounce off the screen have the potential to damage sensitive retina as much as the sun’s rays, the furious pounding at tiny keyboards can even permanently immobilise your hands, in extreme cases, says Dr Vijay Sheel Kumar, a reputed neurosurgeon at the Apollo Hospital here.

CTS, one of the most commonly known Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSIS), is so called because the pain begins in the wrist (or the muscular capsule) and then spreads until it reaches the shoulder and neck. The pain is severe and can even lead to formation of a ganglion.

The most important symptoms of CTS are numbness, tingling and pain in fingers (except the little finger) and hands upon wakening in the morning, weak hands and a tendency to drop objects. Once CTS has progressed beyond a certain point, it may require surgery to correct the problem.

The CTS victims till recently were meat packers who had to slice scores of carcasses everyday, or auto workers who had to drive the same screws hour after hour. Today, the victims are white-collared professionals and clerical workers - scribes racing against time to meet deadlines, airline personnel spending endless hours checking reservations, secretaries typing out notes in plush cabins of corporate offices, telephone reservationists, cashiers and word processors.

While schools may encourage their pupils to grow up computer-savvy, the big culprits are software games that become a kind of chewing gum for eyes, says the doctor. Once hooked, kids can play for hours with an addictive compulsion. The psychological high is confined not only to the kids; even sane adults are turning into computer junkies spending hours playing sedentary golf, tennis, chess or simply shooting down enemies.

Working with screens is more demanding than simply banging on a typewriter, because the variety of activities involved exhaust the body organism faster. Computer users may position their hands over the keyboard with the sensitive wrist cocked upward or downward, compressing the tendons, ligaments and nerves that run through its narrow confines whereas on a typewriter the workers are forced to pause many a time to move the carriage or change the paper.

Since the early ’90s, the incidence of repetitive injuries (RSI) has become the largest category of reported worker illness and injury, forcing both the professionals and workers to sue computer manufacturers like IBM, Apple Computers and AT & T.

According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, repetitive injuries resulted in the longest median absences from work (17 days) of any frequent type of work-related injury and cost the country billions of dollars in health care and lost productivity.

The monster chip is here to stay and proprietors on both the sides of the Atlantic are hastening to comply with new labour legislation covering everything from lighting and user-friendly office furnishings to repeated breaks for stressed-out employees and "ergonomically correct" computer accessories to ward off the technology-induced ailment.— UNI