Work before computer screens. Dangerous? Another way to lose health

1992/02/01 Agirre, Jabier - Medikua eta OEEko kidea Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

Computer screens, also called consoles, terminals or cathodic screens, have invaded our world faster than any other technological innovation. However, with the total proliferation, the pathologies and alterations directly related to the work carried out on these screens have begun to influence the people who work in this sector. For their part, the French unions have achieved special conditions for these workers.

• What do those who face the courts complain about? These are:

• Nervous breakdowns.
• Vomiting (especially nervous, without organic reason).
• Loss of consciousness (often out of working hours, i.e., when individual control is relaxed outside the workplace).
• Changes in sleep (insomnia or difficulty falling asleep). This prompts workers to take snorkelers (sleep agents) that cause damage and toxicity.
• Daytime somnolence.
• Digestive alterations of different kinds.
• Visual fatigue (appears in a variety of ways): eye irritation (54%), betizu (50%), headache (50%), eye itching, pruritus (46%), neck pain (46%), glare (38%), eye pain (38%) and burns (30%), eyelid aches (29%), discomfort (29%), etc.

It must be said that fatigue is very related to the duration of work. Two-thirds of respondents say the symptoms are increasing and worsening as the week progresses (especially as of Thursday) and as the last few days of vacation move away.

In a report prepared by the laboratory of Labor Physiology of the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts of Paris, the errors derived from the conception of the post were highlighted. According to the report, fatigue can be largely due to poor postures. Some of them are due to inadequate work uses, other to poor furniture design, but in most cases the work done before computers is the direct cause of the disease.

Illumination is an important factor, since the eye is the part of the body that most influences this work by the need to dedicate hours to a light source. In addition, if there are reflections on the screen, the operator tends to move himself (and the whole body) to avoid them and continue reading on the screen. These reflexes can cause rigid postures and muscle fatigue, forcing the operator to tilt the trunk backwards, forwards or sideways. In short, poor lighting generates inadequate working conditions.

Another problem detected has been that of people who use bifocal antioju, placing the head in a very painful position. There are many theories that have wanted to explain the origin of the symptoms of fatigue (general or eye), but none of those that are unanimously accepted is the excessive fatigue of the retina, of the ciliary muscles or of the motor muscles of the eye, or the continuous passage from the adaptation effort to the attempt of convergence to improve the purity of the image, or the increase of the pressure of the brows or neuronal factors, influence of the computer too little.

Leaving aside all these theories, it is clear that we must better analyze the workplace and, above all, the illumination, to discard the postural vices. On the other hand, it is necessary that the exposure time in front of the screen is limited, alternating or alternating pauses. The French unions have managed to limit this time to four and a half consecutive hours, with breaks of ten minutes every hour and a half and changes in the tool of work: to match the format and the drawing of the characters of the screen, uniformity of the working documents, etc. All this avoids making extra gymnastics to the eye.

However, these conditions are still not the most adequate (not much less) and as the ergonomic research on this profession advances, it is foreseeable that other measures should be taken. In fact, an investigation carried out in the United States advanced that alterations due to the design and poor design of the jobs in front of cathodic screens are usually young by operators, they do not become detectable diseases until a few years.

The majority of people currently working in this sector are not specialists and are often far from unifying their interests and computer training. On the other hand, automation has turned these tasks into simple routines in many cases, which implies lack of interest and attention to work. Under these conditions, the slightest error in the conception and/or design of work and workplace can produce or launch diseases.

Unfortunately, the diagnosis of this pathology is another chapter. To recognize that a discomfort or symptom is related to the workplace, it is necessary that a company doctor confirm it. But the doctor, rather than by the control and interests of the workers, is subject to the control of the employers and their interests. That is, while the company's doctors have rented out of these companies, they can hardly objectively fulfill their work; if they detect symptoms in the workers and ensure that they are related to the working environment, they would endanger the economic benefits and benefits of the contracted owners.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in these conditions many doctors of the company refuse in these cases or that if they do not want to see themselves in the red street, they simply meditate symptomatically the alterations. The problem is not so complicated, it just needs to be solved.