ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between health and two potential sources of stress and ill health among office workers: the Visual Display Terminal (VDT) and ‘sick building syndrome’. The relationship between working environments and worker's health has been the subject of much research for some years. Health concerns for the VDT user range from visual, musculoskeletal, and even reproductive problems. The centrality of work in Western industrial societies has lead many researchers to examine whether working environments may adversely affect worker health and well-being, resulting in increases in job-related stress and in such withdrawal behaviours as absenteeism and turnover. The impact of VDT technology on health has far-reaching implications both in terms of worker satisfaction and performance, and economic costs of absenteeism and human error. Sceptics argue that a secretary will suffer the effects of a bad office environment as much as a VDT operator will.
