Don’t Trip Over Your Computer
June 27, 2009 by Peggy Rowland
Filed under Home & Living
Computer-related injuries are on the rise! That’s perhaps no surprise given the surge in home computer use in recent years.
However, acute computer-related injuries rose by 732% in one recent study, while the increase in household computer ownership was only 309%. Clearly, something isn’t going so well.
One of the main sources of injuries during the study period (1994 through 2006) was the monitor. The good news in that department is that monitors are getting flatter, so injuries from monitors have decreased along with monitor size.
Researchers from the Center for Injury Research and Policy and The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital found that injuries included “hitting against or catching on computer equipment; tripping or falling over computer equipment; computer equipment falling on top of the patient; and the straining of muscles or joints.”
The most common cause of injury in the study was tripping or falling over computer equipment.
The study, “Acute Computer-Related Injuries Treated in U.S. Emergency Departments, 1994-2006″, appears in the July issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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