Two industry ergonomic standards now in the works will have employers, workers and manufacturers taking a closer look at the quality of our workplace environments, predicts Dennis McIntosh, an ergonomics public-policy consultant in Washington, D.C. Under study and development for the past five years, one standard targets cumulative-trauma disorders while the other provides up-to-the minute guidelines on the best ergonomic designs for computer workstations.
"The recommendations are optional, but they certainly will have an influence on ergonomic practices in the workplace," McIntosh says.
The following sketches offer summaries of their concerns and provisions.
The Z-365 standard is intended to help control or curb CTDs--disorders of the muscles, tendons, peripheral nerves or vascular system that some believe may be precipitated or aggravated by intense repeated motions of the body.
The standard's prime considerations are work postures and work layout, and it specifies four components: surveillance (collecting data about suspected job hazards); job analysis and redesign (using the hazard data to redesign jobs); medical management (providing the right treatment to affected employees), and training in hazard identification and remediation.
Finalizing the standard has proven problematic because there is no consensus on what CTDs really are, McIntosh says, much less on how to prevent them. The current draft of the standard specifies one approach that may or may not work. Difficulties in developing a CTD standard acceptable to business, labor unions, public-health doctors and academics is underscored by the lack of real scientific research on CTD prevention.
As a result, standard developers move cautiously because eventual adoption of a CTD standard could play a significant role in safety-and-health enforcement. Since states and the federal government have yet to adopt ergonomic safety-and-health regulations, state and federal safety-and-health agencies could make significant use of the CTD standard in ergonomic enforcement actions.
This standard also could play a fairly significant role in worker's compensation hearings over claims for work-related CTDs as it finds its way into the collective-bargaining process, McIntosh warns. "Unionized companies probably are going to see attempts by organized labor to use the standard as a bargaining goal or as a justification for particular demands."
The other voluntary standard nearing finalization is the American National Standard for Human Factors Engineering of the Video Display Terminal Workstation, also (thankfully) known as the HFES standard. It has ignited less controversy and will probably be finalized before the CTD standard, although both may not reach finalization until 1997.
Sponsored by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., this standard is actually a revision of an existing one adopted in 1988. The biggest challenge has been trying to keep it up-to-date as products, information and computer technology continue to change. The committee in some cases has had to revise work that was written even a few months before because it is no longer applicable.
The biggest difference between the HFES standard and the Z-365 standard is HFES's heavy emphasis on product design. Implementation of this standard allows companies to improve the ergonomic layout of workstations with worker comfort and productivity in mind. Its goals are ease of use, comfort and acceptability, improved computer-operator performance, higher output, fewer errors and greater satisfaction in using the computer workstation.
HFES has two levels of conformance. Manufacturers are going to conform to the component requirements such as the screen of a computer. Employers are going to look at the system-level conformance requirements.
The standard addresses five areas:
This standard could also find its way into collective bargaining and litigation, says McIntosh. "Even if you don't intend to use these standards, pay attention to them. They will have an impact on your company."
McIntosh can be reached by E-mail, denjammac@aol.com; phone, (202) 942-0405; or fax, (202) 737-2601.
Memmott is a free-lance editor in Chantilly, Va. Phone, (703) 802-6558; fax, 631-4281.
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