Health Hazard Evaluation Report: HETA-80-127-1337: The Baltimore Sun; Baltimore, Maryland

Details

• Personal Author:
  Halperin, William E. ; Richards, R. D. ; Smith, Alexander B. ; Tanaka, Shiro
• Corporate Authors:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Description:
  In response to a request from the Newspaper Guild, AFL-CIO, an evaluation was undertaken of possible hazardous working conditions at the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland specifically for those workers using video display terminals (VDTs). These workers had complained of cataracts, other eye problems, headaches, and back and neck aches. A survey was conducted of 379 workers concerning symptoms, VDT use, and job characteristics. As subjects increasingly reported that they were bothered by the brightness of the VDT screen or characters, by the glare off the screen, by the readability of the characters, or by flicker, they also increasingly reported changes in visual function, pain and stiffness in the neck and back, headaches associated with work, and headaches accompanied by eye symptoms, nasal discharge and sweating. The type of VDT work and VDT screen and keyboard characteristics were found to be related to the type of headaches experienced. Eye examinations were performed on all survey participants. No meaningful relationships were found between the adequacy of the participants' refractions, including the wearing of glasses with multiple focal lenses, and the reporting of work associated symptoms. No significant association was found between VDT use, including hours per week of VDT operation and total years of VDT operating experience, and the prevalence of eye abnormalities, including cataracts.
• Subjects:
  Ergonomics Eye Diseases Headache Musculoskeletal Diseases Musculoskeletal System Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Back And Neck Aches Cataracts Eye-disorders Eye Problems Hazard-Unconfirmed Headaches HETA-80-127-1337 Keyboard-operators Musculoskeletal-system-disorders NIOSH-Author NIOSH-Health-Hazard-Evaluation NIOSH-Technical-Assistance-Report Office-workers OSHA Region 3 Posture VDTs Video-display-terminals Video Display Terminals

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• Series:
  Health Hazard Evaluation Reports (HHE)
• Subseries:
  Health Evaluation and Technical Assistance (HETA)
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Field Study
• Place as Subject:
  Maryland ; OSHA Region 3
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSHEFS - Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations, and Field Studies
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  160 pdf pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:00220826
• NTIS Accession Number:
  PB94-207776
• Citation:
  Cincinnati, Ohio: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, HETA 80-127-1337, 1983 Jul ; :1-162
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1983
• NORA Priority Area:
  Musculoskeletal-system-disorders
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• NAICS and SIC Codes:
  3651 - Household audio and video equipment - (SIC)
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:09d3a845a6a9da5c1864437d0b5f554585ce6fe01815b03345aa432b12ef95b42c2cd4c96021d6bb131158dcc75c52939f874fc7ae2af095eedda288aed4ba98
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/171788/cdc_171788_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 4.10 MB ]