VDT’s Effect on the Unborn Studied
Researchers at the University of Michigan, with funds from the March of Dimes, are conducting what they say is the first major study of whether pregnant women who work at video display terminals are at increased risk of miscarriage or having babies with birth defects.
Concerned agencies and organizations, including the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, have long said a comprehensive study was needed since evidence that VDTs may be hazardous to the unborn is anecdotal, based on reports of clusters of miscarriages and birth defects significantly above the normal rate in some groups of office workers around the country and in other countries. Radiation emitted by terminals, the stressful aspects of working on terminals or simply coincidence have been proposed as explanations of these clusters.
Getting the cooperation of employers and workers in order to provide the numbers of subjects needed for a definitive study has been a problem with some previous research. Much of the work has been done on eye fatigue, the most common complaint of VDT users.
The study, involving 6,000 State of Michigan clerical workers, will look into job stress as well as VDT use, and it is only a statistical study, a first step. It will not directly examine such factors as radiation, but if statistical links are found, areas for further study would be indicated. If pregnancy problems appear to be related to VDT use and not to job stress, that would point to the need for a study of radiation, said William Butler, co-director with Kelley Brix of the research. Butler is an assistant professor of biostatistics in the university’s School of Public Health. Brix is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health and instructor at the UM Medical School. The Michigan researchers worked with the state employees’ union and management to design the project.
Suspected Links
According to the March of Dimes, “only systematic studies like this can show whether this and other suspected links between environmental factors and birth defects actually exist and require preventive action.”
Questionnaires have been distributed to the 6,000 female clerical employees at 46 locations around the state, including urban and suburban counties. They were asked about their health, whether they have been pregnant and the outcome and about their jobs and the type of equipment they use. Eight hundred of the respondents were chosen for personal interviews and asked for in-depth information about their work, perceptions of job stress, medical problems and pregnancy outcomes. Of these, one fourth worked almost full-time with VDTs, one half worked part-time on terminals and one fourth did work similar to that of the others but without using VDTs.
Some other studies, including one in Los Angeles, have looked into the controversial VDT issue, but these asked women to report how they think use of terminals has affected them. The UM/March of Dimes study did not direct respondents to draw any conclusions. “At no time were the employees told about the primary purpose of the study,” Brix said in the university’s announcement of the project. “They were asked about stress and the kinds of work they did and about general health problems, so we will be able to examine very carefully how a lot of tasks affect their health.” Preliminary results are expected to be available in June or July.
Judith M. Sweet, director of athletics at UC San Diego since 1975--when she became the first woman in the country to head a combined men’s and women’s collegiate athletics program--has been named a vice president of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., only the third woman to hold such a position in the organization, which is the governing body for intercollegiate athletics.
Sweet will be one of five officers governing the NCAA and also presiding officer for Division III schools. (The three NCAA divisions are based on the size of sports programs and numbers of athletic scholarships offered. Division III schools have smaller programs and offer no athletic scholarships.)
As Division III head, she said, she’ll deal with problems like how to finance teams’ travel to games. As one of the five top officers in the NCAA, which deals with schools in all divisions, matters currently being dealt with include controversial new regulations regarding academic standards and drug testing of athletes.
