• Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.65-69
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• 2009

Purpose: Recently incidence of VDT syndrome has gradually increased as extensive use of computers. VDT syndrome reported by VDT workers include musculoskeletal disorder, neuropsychiatric disoders and eye symptoms such as eye strain, tired eyes, irritation and blurred vision. The environmental factors of VDT syndrome include electromagnetic waves, size, brightness and lighting of computer screen, height of a monitor and a worktable, working hours, kind of task, distance between screen and workers, indoor humidity and temperature, indoor air contamination and ventilation. In this study, we investigated the environmental factors related to body symptoms and health effects included in VDT syndrome. Methods: Study subjects were total 120 persons (54 male, 66 female) with age from 19 to 28. We surveyed the body symptoms and physical discomfort when doing an activity in a short distance such as reading book or paper, computer work. The questionnaire included main body symptoms, self-consciousness symptoms of eye, satisfaction of working environment, pain of the wrist when using keyboard and mouse. Results: Most of people (70%) felt physical pain from long time work of computer, paper, electrical apparatus. They mainly complained pain of neck and low back (57.1%), eye (45.2%) and head (31%). With the environmental factors, 78.3% of the subjects complaint pain of eye from inappropriate illumination. Most of the symptoms included 'eye fatigue'(38.3%), 'dryness of eye'(31.9%) and 'blurred vision'(23.7%). Subjects in this study complained discomfort of their chairs and most of them experienced pain in the wrist when using keyboard or mouse. Conclusions: When people use electrical apparatus or work with paper, people would get their eye fatigue and feeling of physical fatigue because of not harmonizing various environmental factors such as light, space, posture, worktable with theirselves. Therefore, workers should develop preventive method such as self-control of adequate break time to avoid fatigue while VDT work. Work environment should be changed to ergonomic design for optimal visual environment to prevent musculoskeletal disorder through constant research.