Results from a recent survey in Great Britain indicated that each year an estimated 400,000 people suffer from RSI (upper limb or neck disorder) caused or made worse by work and this results in around 4 million working days lost a year. The total number suffering from MSDs was put at 1.1 million in Great Britain in 2001/2002, according to the HSE.
There are three new publications. Advice on using laptops and working with a computer mouse is available in "The law on VDUs: an easy guide" and "Work with Display Screen Equipment", while "Aching arms (or RSI) in small businesses" offers advice on RSI in other work activities.
Health and Safety Commissioner Owen Tudor, launching the three HSE guidance booklets at a conference organised by the RSI Association in Nottingham, said:
"The time for excuses is over. By following the guidance, preventative action in most workplaces can be taken quite easily and need not be costly. Indeed it is likely to be far more expensive for employers and their insurers to ignore RSI, which may lead not only to compensation claims, but also to costs arising from sickness absences and reduced productivity.
"Excessive work pressures, such as high job demands, time pressures and a lack of control, can often act alongside physical risk factors like force, posture and repetition, and can influence both the onset and duration of RSI. Only an integrated management approach which addresses both the organisational and the physical aspects of a worker's job and work environment is likely to be successful in preventing RSI.
"It is particularly important to identify signs of RSI early, to treat the individual and remedy the causes, including stress and other psychosocial factors in the workplace, before the condition moves into its chronic phase".
An estimated 12.3 million working days were lost due to work-related MSDs and on average each sufferer took 19.4 days off in 2001/02.
The booklet "The law on VDUs: an easy guide", which is aimed at small businesses, contains illustrated, practical advice on avoiding risk from using ordinary office computers, while "Work with display screen equipment" discusses the same issues in full technical and legal detail and is aimed at large firms and health and safety professionals. Both guides take account of recent minor changes to the law that came into effect last September, as a result of the Health and Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2002.
The Health and Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2002 made a number of small changes to earlier legislation. The main change to the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 was to extend the workstation minimum requirements to apply to all workstations covered by the Regulations.
Last year, HSE inspectors visited over 8,000 workplaces concentrating on MSD risks, resulting in 226 improvement notices and 31 prohibition notices being issued under either Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 or the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992.
The guides on DSE are both updates of previous booklets published in 1994 and 1992. They include information on the latest equipment and modern ways of working, such as using lap-tops; a mouse, trackball or other pointing device; homeworking and teleworking; and choosing appropriate software, such as programs that monitor rest pauses.
"Aching arms (or RSI) in small businesses" is a new free leaflet aimed at reducing RSI due to work activities other than those caused by using display screen equipment (DSE). It offers advice for identifying risk factors such as using force, repetitive movements, or poor posture, and gives practical ideas and tips for preventing RSI.
Copies of "Work with display screen equipment" and "The law on VDUs: an easy guide" are not available on-line. Each is priced at £8.50 and can be ordered from HSE Books, PO Box 1999, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 2WA. Tel: 01787 881165.
Copies of "Aching arms (or RSI) in small businesses" are available in priced packs of 15 or individual copies are free from HSE Books.
For more information about the MSD Priority Programme, see:
www.hse.gov.uk/msd