Avoiding mouse traps, killer keyboards, and other workstation hazards

Shortly after starting to use a new workstation for a school project, MIT student Lindsay Price, an aeronautical and astronautical engineering major, noticed that her hands felt a bit strange. "They started getting tired more easily and felt clumsier," she says. "I didn't think it was anything serious."

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For Rachel Silver, associate director of major gifts in the Office of Resource Development at MIT's Sloan School , it started with some neck and shoulder pain while typing on her laptop. Initially, she says, she was able to explain it away. "It was at a time when I was traveling a lot for my job and carrying a lot of things," she explains. "The pain was not severe at first, and it didn't hurt when I used my regular PC in my office."

Before long, however, both women experienced a worsening of their symptoms. "I began waking up with pain in my hands and forearms," Price says. "I couldn't grip a pencil to take notes in class. When it started hurting even to wash my face, I knew I needed to do something about it."

Silver's pain also increased. Soon it hurt to use any computer. Eventually, she says, "I ended up in Urgent Care at MIT Medical because of severe pain in my shoulders."

Diagnosis RSI

Both Price and Silver were diagnosed with repetitive strain injury, or RSI, an injury to muscles, tendons, and/or nerves in the hands, wrists, elbows, arms, shoulders, back, or neck, caused by overuse or misuse. More than 200 MIT students and employees are diagnosed with RSI each year, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, says MIT Medical's chief of medicine, David Diamond, M.D., an RSI expert. "A recent MIT student survey suggests that about half of all MIT students have had occasional symptoms from computer overuse, and about 15 percent have more prolonged or severe symptoms," he reports. From his clinical experience, Diamond suspects that RSI incidence is similar among Institute employees and affiliates.

Diamond identifies two major factors that contribute to the development of RSI-chronic repetition and static posture. "Modern keyboarding does not lend itself to the kind of 'rest breaks' that were built into older, manual typewriters, where one needed to pause for carriage returns, paper changes, and error correction," he notes. "When you're at a computer keyboard, or using a mouse, there's chronic repetition in the forearm muscles and static posture in the rest of the body. And, of course, an ergonomically inappropriate workstation further increases the risk."

The dangerous desk

Price now realizes that her new workstation was the cause of her pain. "It had me typing with my fingers lifted up above the level of my wrists, so my wrists were at an odd angle," she explains, "bent almost as if I were doing pushups."

An ergonomic evaluation of Silver's workstation also revealed problems. For example, although she was using an "ergonomic chair," it was not adjusted appropriately for her body. Her workstation also lacked a keyboard tray. "My computer keyboard was on top of my desk," Silver says, "which was much too high."

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