According to OSHA, every year 2,000,000 people suffer work-related muscular skeletal disorders including repetitive strain injury from spending long hours reading e-mail, surfing the web, writing documents, etc.

Give some thought to your employee’s and your health as you use computers.

Some suggestions:

• Keep your wrists straight while typing and while using the mouse;
• Do wrists exercises;
• Take frequent breaks and stretch;
• Keep stomach and back muscles strong through exercise;
• Massage at the end of the day;
• Eyestrain - stay a foot and ½ away from the screen, position external light off to the side so it doesn’t glare off the screen;
• Use minimum force to strike keys;
• Keep shoulders relaxed, elbows close to the body;
• Posture counts;
• Sit up straight with shoulders and head back;
• Feet flat on the floor or on a footrest and forearms parallel to the floor;
• Use free macro programs, such as TypeItIn - free www.wavget.com, to cut down on the number of keystrokes.

Other helpful sites and resources: FAQ Typing Injury (www.tifaq.com) and Harvard RSI Action (www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu).