New guidance on using computers and preventing RSI

HSE press release E030:03 - 28 February 2003

New guidance to help reduce musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), such as backaches or repetitive strain injury (RSI) at work, has today been published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), to coincide with International RSI Awareness day.

Around 1.1 million people in Great Britain suffered from MSDs caused or made worse by work, in 2001/02.

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 (HSC) 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. These figures include upper limb disorders from which approximately 400,000 people suffered, resulting in a loss of around four million working days in the same period.

'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.

'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.

Notes to editors

1. Owen Tudor spoke at the conference 'RSI: a costly business', organised by the RSI Association as a contribution to International RSI Awareness Day 2003. It was held at the Albert Hall, Nottingham on 28 February 2003 and was chaired by Kate Nash, Chief Executive of the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation (RADAR), the national disability charity.

2. The guidance on DSE forms part of HSC's Priority Programme on MSDs. The Priority Programme aims to reduce the incidence of work-related illness involving musculoskeletal disorders, and reduce the number of working days lost due to these disorders. HSE aims to achieve the targets in the Programme by communicating effectively with all stakeholders (such as employers, employees and their safety representatives, and health professionals) to encourage ownership of the plan and its outputs, keeping them informed, and giving them opportunities to contribute, revising the strategy as necessary. For more information about the MSD Priority Programme please see the MSD webpages on the HSE site: http://www.hse.gov.uk/msd

3. 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.

4. 'Aching arms (or RSI) in small businesses' is based on a more comprehensive publication 'Upper limb disorders in the workplace', HSG60 (rev), which was launched last year (ISBN 0 7176 1978 8).

5. For individual VDU users and those seeking a short introduction to this subject, HSE's free booklet 'Working with VDUs' INDG36 (revised in 1998) continues to be available.

6. 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.

7. 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.

Copies of 'Work with display screen equipment' L26, ISBN 0 7176 2582 6, price £8.95, and 'The law on VDUs: an easy guide' HSG90, ISBN 0 7176 2602 4, price £8.50, are available from HSE Books

Additional copies of the 'VDU workstation checklist' (which is included in both the above publications) can also be ordered from HSE Books, ISBN 0-7162-2617-2,price £5.00 for a pack of 5, with price reductions on a sliding scale for larger orders.

Copies of 'Aching arms (or RSI) in small businesses' INDG171(rev1), ISBN 0 7176 2600 8, are available in priced packs of 15 or individual copies free from HSE Books.

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