Chapter 5 - Management and Personnel Technology Considerations | Ergonomics According to OSHA, every year 2,000,000 people suffer work-related muscular skeletal disorders including repetitive strain injury from spending long hours reading e-mail, surfing the web, writing documents, etc. Give some thought to your employee’s and your health as you use computers. Some suggestions: -
Keep your wrists straight while typing and while using the mouse; -
Do wrists exercises; -
Take frequent breaks and stretch; -
Keep stomach and back muscles strong through exercise; -
Massage at the end of the day; -
Eyestrain - stay a foot and ½ away from the screen, position external light off to the side so it doesn’t glare off the screen; -
Use minimum force to strike keys; -
Keep shoulders relaxed, elbows close to the body; -
Posture counts; -
Sit up straight with shoulders and head back; -
Feet flat on the floor or on a footrest and forearms parallel to the floor; -
Use free macro programs, such as TypeItIn - free www.wavget.com, to cut down on the number of keystrokes. Other helpful sites and resources: FAQ Typing Injury (www.tifaq.com) and Harvard RSI Action (www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu).
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