Repetitive-Motion Illness on Rise, Experts Say : Health: Reported job-related cases climbed 700% in 1980s, and many others are suspected. Proliferation of computer is partly to blame.

The number of repetitive-motion illnesses reported by American workers increased seven-fold in the last decade, but the actual number of cases is incalculably greater because many employers remain skeptical that the syndrome is real and many workers are unware of it or afraid to report it, experts told a congressional hearing Thursday.

The number of reported repetitive-motion illnesses--disorders of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems caused by doing the same thing hundreds or thousands of times a day--rose from 22,000 in 1981 to 150,000 in 1989, the most recent year examined by the Labor Department.

Those cases now account for 52% of all workplace illness, noted Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), the chairman of a House subcommittee on employment and housing, who for the second time in three years scheduled a day of testimony on what he frequently calls “the occupational disease of the ‘90s.”

Repetitive-motion illness strikes a wide variety of workers, from supermarket clerks to meat cutters to operators of computer terminals. As computer technology has spread, the pace and monitoring of many jobs has been increased. The sheer volume of computers itself plays a role: New census data released earlier this week revealed that 37% of adults use computers on the job, up from 25% in 1984.

At Thursday’s hearing, a California Department of Health Services official suggested that only 2% of cases of repetitive-motion illness--including a wrist and hand ailment known as carpal tunnel syndrome--are formally reported.

Linda Rudolph, acting chief of the state’s occupational health program, said a 1987 survey of 515 Santa Clara County physicians found 3,413 cases of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome, which is most often experienced by computer users and supermarket clerks. Yet during the same period only 82 carpal tunnel cases were reported by doctors to the state’s Division of Industrial Relations, as required by law.

Thus the annual number of new cases of carpal tunnel syndrome in California could well be 100,000 rather than the reported 2,000, Rudolph said.

“I don’t have any reason to suspect the reporting is any better” for repetitive-motion illnesses as a whole, she said.

Rudolph said another project in Santa Clara County used information from physicians to identify nearly three dozen companies with high levels of carpal tunnel syndrome. State health officials offered the employers free ergonomic evaluations--studying the problems of people adjusting to their work environment--but were turned down by 75% of the companies, most commonly because of “a lack of upper-management support,” she said.

Business resistance to preventive measures--often involving tens of thousands of dollars in adjustable work equipment that allows work to be done with proper posture--is widely blamed for increased cases of repetitive-motion illness.

Several union representatives and workers who suffered illnesses acknowledged that they face an uphill battle in attempting to slow the use of automated technology so often associated with medical problems.

“Although ergonomically designed equipment will help reduce some repetitive strain . . . part of the equation is the nature of (fast-paced, repetitive) work,” said Joan Lichterman, an editor of a UC Berkeley publication who suffers from extensive nerve damage in both hands as a result of too much typing. “Until this is changed, I think workers will continue to get these kinds of injuries. Human bodies were not meant to perform the same minute tasks over and over again, eight hours a day for consecutive days.”

Both state and federal regulators have shied away from pressuring businesses with general workplace rules. It was not until last summer that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration published its first set of ergonomic guidelines, targeted at meat packing, which has the highest rate of illness. It will be years before OSHA creates national ergonomic rules for all industries to follow, officials admit.

Cal/OSHA, which two years ago vetoed a proposal to set rules for video display terminals, has no ergonomic policies--nor does it have a single ergonomist on staff. Frank Ciofalo, Cal/OSHA’s deputy chief, said Thursday that by the end of the year his agency will develop a regulation requiring companies to protect workers from repetitive-motion hazards.