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| Coliseum
by Kimball |
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| S-COM by
Haworth |
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| If System
by Haworth |
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Cumulative Trauma
Disorders - CTD's - are a major cause of health problems for workers,
and a source of enormous costs for their employers. CTD refers to syndromes
marked by discomfort, persistent pain, impairment or disability in joints,
muscle, tendons, and other soft tissues, with or without medical
manifestations. We customarily think of an on-the-job back injury as
resulting from a worker lifting a heavy object, causing acute injury with immediate
and intense pain. But as we've moved from the industrial age into the
information age with more and more employees spending their workdays seated,
another culprit has emerged: the chair. We have been slow in identifying
seating as a potential cause of CTD's, perhaps because sitting is ordinarily
thought of as a way to relax.
While poor seating can
cause or aggravate CTD's, good seating can go a long way toward preventing
them. The two main features to look for in a well-designed, ergonomic chair
are: first, flexibility: it should handle the three main positions;
second, adjustability: a well-designed chair should adjust to fit the
needs of 95% of the population. It should have easy-to-reach-and-perform
adjustments while seating.
Today's furniture
purchasing may have a profound effect on a company's work force health and
productivity measured in hundreds of thousand dollars. The process of
selecting a chair for a workplace should not be a decision to be made in a
matter of minutes. A different perspective is needed. It may take as much as
two weeks for the body to get used to a new way of seating. Sitting posture
is a habit, and habits are not easily changed. Employees should be allowed
time to adjust. |
