ABSTRACT

Cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) has become the most common, costly, and disabling category of occupational illness in the United States, affecting a wide spectrum of business and industry (USDL, 1994).1 Musculoskeletal pain and related disability creates massive human and financial cost for society, whether its origins are personal, work-related, or somewhere in between (IOM, 1991; Magni, 1993). Much remains unsettled regarding distribution of this cost (Walsh, 1991) and the associated responsibility for prevention (Millar, 1988). In the United States, these unsettled issues lie squarely amidst a larger societal dialogue about distributing illness costs and health-care controls among individuals, government, and employers (Deyo et al., 1991; Salmon, 1990).