NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Question and Answer Session
MR. ALBIN: Any questions, if you can come to the floor microphone, please, or comments.
Q: Karl Marion from Ergometrics in Eugene, Oregon for Bob. I was wondering with your sit/stand work station whether you had a cooperative effort with a manufacturer to produce those or if you produced it as in house. Secondly, if you have seen any benefits to using Microsoft or a similar type of keyboard.
Mr. Plott: For the sit/stand work stations, we worked with three different vendors to provide the equipment. The only OEM manufacturer that couldn't meet our recommendation was a Weber napkin made out of Upper State New York. We actually have them installed in Hayworth System furniture, but they are available from Hayworth, from Invincible Office Furniture Company, which I believe is in this area, and the last one is General Wood Working in Massachusetts. Again, it is a Weber nap unit, and it does have 24 inches of throw. It is a very nice unit.
We have not implemented from any mask scale perspective alternative keyboards. I particularly do not like -- and this is my opinion only -- the Microsoft natural keyboard. I think anything from an ergonomic perspective, like a keyboard or a chair or a work station, needs to be adjustable for the users. The engineers designed it for someone. They didn't design it for everybody. One of my major beefs with some of those keyboards is they make you reach a long way to the mouse, and the Microsoft natural particularly does have a real long reach to the mouse.
For our sit/stand work stations we work through Miller, Steel Case, and Hayworth, the big three. They went to other vendors to get their other units to do the sit/stand height. We had them go through that process to and we have a variety of different types in use.
With regard to the natural keyboards and so on, we kind of shy away from them. If somebody has a prescription or a special need or whatever, we will provide them. The biggest issue that I tend to have with them is our work force doesn't really touch type that much anymore. If you are not a touch typist, those keys become kind of hard to see. Hunt and peck typist find they aren't that effective. So we tend to meet the needs of the individual with regard to those.
MR. MORENCY: I would agree with that. Seventy percent of our folks are not touch typists. If we do get into alternative keyboards, I would like to have something that moves, either the Lexmark or the new Cherry keyboard, something that allows for some flexibility and the fact that it doesn't have the number key at the end of the keyboard. Most folks do not use that part of the keyboard very much. It forces you to reach that extra four inches or five inches for the mouse.
MS. LARSON: We have also done some casual investigation of various alternative keyboards and found some very unique problems with some of them. One of the problems being the fact that six months later most of them are not manufactured anymore, but also another one that had the enter key right next to the delete key, and some of the layout of the keys have changed enough so that they are awkward to use. You need to be careful about those kinds of things, as well as the issues that deal with posture and addressing the keys that way.
Q: Neal Taslity, Execitive Director of the National Repetive Strain Injury Foundation. I have a few questions. As long as you folks just mentioned the alternative keyboards, I know the NIOSH funded study at Marklin by Professor Merklyn is going to be made public at the end of this month or at the beginning of February. It was a two-year test, and I think that some of the results that he found will have implications and answer some questions about some of the concerns.
Q: A question to Nancy Larson regarding the surveys you do, are they anonymous surveys?
MS. LARSON: Yes, they are, very definitely.
Q: Another question regarding the facilities, the budget that you mentioned for the ergonomic tools or work stations would come out of the facilities manager's budget. One of the things seen throughout the country is conflict between the safety managers or the human resources or personnel and the facilities groups because there of a limited budget. With downsizing their marching orders are to reduce their cost for new capital improvements or accessory items. One of the things that some companies have done, which has drastically changed the attitude of the facility managers, is to have an accounting which would then debit their budget for workers' compensation claims associated with poor ergonomics so that you would then have a real incentive to get the job done earlier.
Many companies that do not make changes until a doctor or a medical professional has in writing made the request for the change. Often times that occurs way down the line where it is too late already to prevent the problem.
Another question regarding graphics where you showed that you were able to eliminate all but, in most cases, between 10 to 20 percent of the problems. There are some physicians that do this on a full-time basis that have been able to get rates down as low as two percent or practically the problem has been totally eradicated as 98 percent or some of the figures that I have discussed with some of the physicians. It seems to me that that five or 20 percent still represents, in term of total dollars, a huge sum. What is being done to get to those others who have more significant problems and need more refinement to reduce those problems?
MS. LARSON: I think we have a multi-part question here. First, to address the facilities issues and charges back to facilities, in many cases that may be inappropriate because facilities only set the stage. You can provide someone with all the right tools, but if they don't use them appropriately or the job is not designed well, it is still not going to be effective. So I would be hesitant to say that that would be an effective strategy.
An advantage with putting all of our accessories into a standardization process is it relieved the managers of the responsibility of looking at catalogs trying to identify the correct products. It also allowed our purchasing people to do their leveraging act and to ensure a cost effective product. We stock it in-house, and have 24 hour standard delivery within our system. I know that it is not typical but it works for us.
The question regarding the graphics, there may have been a misinterpretation of our charts. The discomfort chart showed everything from occasional discomfort to almost daily discomfort. Our VLS rating for our industry is a .75, and we have seen that come down and become a very nice number. So it is not just showing the severity. Those are not people who are all workers' compensation claims. There are people who have a problem once in awhile, and so we are trying to address the issue much further upstream than just the reactive, after someone has filed a workers' compensation claim. We have seen some nice reductions, about 20 percent of our workers' comp. claim numbers as well. Did that answer your question?
Q: The concern was that in many of these problems there has been a dramatic reduction in claims, but still not eliminated. Many physicians believe that 98 percent of these problems can be eliminated. My question is as we are here sharing information, what is it if you cannot get someone to be relieved of their symptoms? Sometimes I know it is impossible because they have already had surgery and it may be too far down the line and they have some permanent damage. But, in some other instances what kind of research are you doing or do you need to get those people adequately and properly situated to their work station, the hard cases?
MS. LARSON: Yes, and there are always going to be some.
Q: Because those tend to be the most expensive. Those are the ones that end up in litigation.
MS. LARSON: Exactly. That small percentage may cause a lot of dollars to go out the door. I think that we have to remember that this is a multi-faceted problem. It is not just what happens to the person at work. It is what happens to them 24 hours a day. There are some genetic factors that play into it. There are personal health issues that sometimes play into it, and in spite of the fact that we can design a job that has very low risk factors, we can create the perfect work station or as close to it as possible, there are always going to be some people that have problems because they are human beings and they are alive and we don't work properly 100 percent of everyday.
So what do we need? I guess we need better information about where are some of these root causes. We know that there are well identified risk factors. We know that there is a correlation. We don't have dose effect, but we don't have that for very many things in this world. We also know that we are not going to be 100 percent effective.
MR. ALBIN: Let me call on the next question, if I may, so we are moving questions around. To the microphone at the back of the room, please?
Q : Yes, I have a question for the CWA people. I believe I heard Norton Hadler. You probably are familiar with Norton. He is the man who is playing Don Quixote against the whole concept of cumulative trauma and ergonomics, and I think most recently he rather brashly declared cumulative trauma a dead issue. He has cited the CWA/NIOSH studies and declares that his analysis of those studies fails to give evidence that there were work-related cumulative trauma problems and perhaps fails to give evidence that there were ergonomic aspects in contrast to say stress issues or other sorts of non-bio-mechanical issues. I would like to hear what CWA has to say about that.
Mr. Legrande: In brief, Dr. Hadler has a unique viewpoint that not many in his profession hold, and certainly he would suggest that the disorders associated with workers in VDT jobs are psychosocial and certainly not work related. The data speaks for itself. Dr. Hadler's comments are not agreed to by the majority of his peers in the medical community. I don't think it serves to debate his thoughts only to suggest that there is data that shows a relationship between physical ergonomics, as well as psychosocial concerns and the occurrence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders.
MR. ALBIN: Any additional questions? Let's take this as the last question.
Q : Just in response to what LeGrande said about Dr. Hadler. I have read most of Dr. Hadler's materials and heard him speak. It was at the conference of occupational and environmental physicians several years ago where he actually said that he believed that the problem was that the workers needed to raise the threshold level of pain and endure the pain. This is something that, I think, has been viewed throughout this dilemma as that the people that have these injuries have lower thresholds and are whiners or malingerers when, in fact, our experience with the RSI Foundation is just the opposite. There was a recent report on this that just came out in one of the medical journals. The hardest working people are the ones that are most susceptible because they keep on working with the pain. They work beyond their threshold level of pain until they do permanent damage, and those are the ones that then have the serious problems. I think it is just the opposite of what Dr. Hadler would suggest with the threshold level.
MR. ALBIN: Thanks a lot. Why don't we conclude this session? Thanks for your patience in allowing us to run a few minutes over. Certainly, if you have any questions, the presenters are still here and there are also papers that were left on the registration table. Thank you.
