All Eyes on the VDT

By Christine Gorman

A desk job is supposed to be safe. No one needs a hard hat to type a memo or protective goggles to shuffle paper. But as the work force migrates from the shop floor to the corporate cubicle, millions of people face what some think may be a new health hazard -- the omnipresent video-display terminal, or VDT. * Basing their charges on a scattershot array of scientific data, union leaders claim that prolonged work in front of a computer screen can impair vision and cause headaches. Some critics say the work may even trigger miscarriages. The unions' campaign to win mandatory VDT safeguards shows every sign of becoming one of organized labor's more determined efforts of the post-industrial age. Some 19 million people, most of them women, currently work at VDTs in the U.S., a number that will more than double by the mid-1990s.

The nascent union cause scored a victory last week when legislators in Suffolk County, N.Y., enacted the first law in the U.S. to regulate VDT use in the workplace. The ordinance applies to businesses that operate more than 20 VDTs and mandates a 15-minute break every three hours for workers who use the terminals more than 26 hours a week. Employers must contribute 80% of the cost of eyeglasses and yearly eye exams; by 1990, adjustable chairs and nonglare screens will be compulsory for all new equipment.

Although business leaders decried the Suffolk ruling as misguided, at least 30 states are contemplating similar measures. Says Jan Pierce, vice president of the Communications Workers of America: "We now have some badly needed momentum to pursue the same remedy in the rest of New York, the U.S. and Canada."

Since the introduction of VDTs in the 1960s, there have been worker complaints of eyestrain, headaches, stiff necks and sore wrists. A California city worker says that after entering data into a VDT for six months, seven hours a shift, she developed migraines, temporary blindness and shoulder pains. "A lot of people don't take it seriously," she contends. "They think it's a lot of hypochondriac women complaining all the time. Those are people who don't work with computers all day." Researchers believe that some of the visual problems stem from too much glare on the screen, which can be alleviated with filters and indirect lighting.

More alarming was a June report of a survey of 1,600 women who had become pregnant since 1984. Researchers from the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland found that expectant mothers who spent 20 or more hours a week at terminals were twice as likely to suffer a miscarriage during the first trimester as non-VDT users. The difference in birth defects was not statistically significant, however. Job-related stress and poor working conditions cannot be ruled out as factors, cautions the study's director, Dr. Edmund Van Brunt, but he believes his research indicates an association between VDT use and miscarriage.

For the Suffolk County legislature, the correlation proved decisive. Said Michael D'Andre, a Republican who switched his vote to support the bill after hearing about the Kaiser-Permanente study: "That was the real clincher for me. Would you gamble with your child?" Even so, the law almost did not pass. When legislators first approved the bill last May, several businesses, including highly computerized New York Telephone and Northwest Airlines, threatened to relocate out of the county or limit expansion. As a result, County Executive Patrick Halpin, a onetime supporter of the measure, vetoed it. Last week, the legislators overrode his decision by a vote of 13 to 5.

Efforts to pass similar legislation in California, Connecticut and other states have met unblinking resistance from business interests. Companies that have provided workers with VDT basics like more comfortable chairs and detachable keyboards and have introduced voluntary safety standards resent government intrusion. Memphis-based Federal Express started dealing with issues of computer-screen safety and comfort as far back as 1983. The company has since installed state-of-the-art workstations and provided 100% coverage of vision care.

While taking precautions, firms emphasize the paucity of conclusive studies. "We see no medical evidence that indicates that VDTs are actually harmful to employees," says a spokesman for New York Telephone. Concurs J. Donald Millar, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: "The VDT revolution has produced impressively few problems" for worker safety.

Such reasoning does not impress union leaders. "More time and money have been spent denying there's a problem than dealing with it," says Deborah Meyer, associate director for 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women. Labor and management in California agree on most of the remedies, according to Laura Stock of the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California, Berkeley. "The argument," she says, "seems to be about who has ultimate control of the workplace."

Computer manufacturers have responded to health concerns by shielding their products against radiation leakage and introducing tiltable models with anti- glare features. "When you look at the recommendations for how the screens should be designed, you find that most of the newer computer models already . have the improvements," Stock says. "The problem is that many of the VDTs that are being used in the workplace have been around for ten or 15 years."

As VDT laws proliferate, corporate naysayers may be pleasantly surprised. Studies suggest that redesigning workstations to make them easier on backs, wrists and eyes can increase productivity up to 30%. Says Marvin Dainoff, professor of psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio: "If you provide people with the proper tools, they're going to be more efficient." In that sense, what is good for the worker may prove even better for the boss.

With reporting by Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York