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Appendix ~
Dissent
Lawrence W. Stark
~ am dissenting from our panel report because of my concern that
the report does not provide adequate guidance to a VDT user or his
or her physician regarding complaints of ocular discomfort and
visual fatigue. I do not, however, disagree with the body of the
report or with the "Executive Summary" in any of the detailed
findings; in particular, I do not believe that radiation damage or
serious diseases such as cataracts result from VDT use.
My own review of the literature substantiated the opinion that
visual fatigue is not a well-defined physiological or clinical entity,
but this scientifically accurate statement cannot negate the fact
that all of us feel fatigue at various times. Indeed, many of us,
finding ourselves at a given moment without sufficient motivation
to go on, have halted tasks as a result of fatigue. I believe that
many highly motivated VDT users suffer from ocular discomfort
and visual fatigue beyond that appropriate to a normal workplace.
Implicit in the appearance of video display terminals on the
marketplace for office and clerical work is the manufacturers'
claim that adequate legibility can be obtained from these ter-
minals. I believe this not to be true. I have never seen a video
display terminal that was nearly as legible as the ordinary pieces
of typewritten paper or copied reports that circulate in our paper
world. We all prefer to look down, with easy convergence on
reading matter--a book, a sheet of typewritten material, or
handwritten correspondence. No VDTs provide robust enough
contrast to enable this "natural" position for the tube face. Most
commercially available VDTs have been simply adapted from
television entertainment video monitors. Those monitors were
originally designed for pictures with fairly large images and
especially for images in motion, a quite different spatial reso-
lution task than reading static alphanumeric characters. Also,
consideration must be given to the length of time spent at a task
and the possible inflexibility of a job requiring reading from the
face of a VDT for an 8-hour day. Our panel report does not
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condemn the poor quality and legibility of current VDTs, but
rather states that scientific evaluation is difficult.
These deficiencies in the report may be the result of the pro-
cess by which the report was assembled. The charges to the panel
(listed in the preface) are narrowly directed. The panel, excellent
scientists from the academic community, all thoroughly reviewed
the scientific literature. We met face to face as a panel on four
occasions and also had opportunities to attend several related pro-
fessional meetings in Washington, D.C. Thus, adequate time and
effort was spent sharing each others' partitioned reviews forming
the narrow responses to the charges; I learned about ergonomics,
display technology, job design, survey methodology, radiation
standards, and clinical epidemiology. In contrast, adequate time
was not spent on consideration of policy questions by the group as
a whole (time and funding constraints, not conspiracy, determined
this). As I learned more about these issues and realized how cen-
tral they were to the panel's overall tasks, I missed the luxury of
panel face-to-face discussions on them. Rather a complex proce-
dure, all by correspondence, of multiple review and responsive
modifications ensued. Thus the panel, to my frustration, was
unable to deal as a group with interpretation and policy, but
remained limited to our focused scientific reviews in response to
the narrow charges. My dissent rests on possible misinterpreta-
tion of the report with its detailed, balanced "scientific" outlook
and style, as supporting the status quo of no standards or guide-
lines for VDT workplaces and no clear concern with unacceptable
levels of ocular discomfort and visual fatigue.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
ocular discomfort
