Hello friends,

I have a rather silly question to arise concerning Ergonomics, Electrostatic Discharge(ESD), and Electromagnetic Interference. I had a birthday recently, and my folks came to my house and proceeded to lecture me about how my current workspace setup is detrimental to my health.

I do admit, there are an awful lot of conducive devices less than two feet from my person 10-15 hours per day. I have read,(at one point or another) the documentation that comes packed with the purchase of new devices, but I have never heard of anyone falling victim to their PC setup.

Other than theoretical opinions, has anyone heard of such calamities deriving directly from their proximity to their computer arrangement?


Here's a rundown of my setup:

- from left to right, all within 6' of me, in a 14'x16' room -


[Entertainment Center]

-36" TV
-X-Box
-DVD Player
-Cable Box
-Surround-Sound Sub Woofer
-Center mid-speaker

[Computer Work Space - all on desk -]

-Tower style PC - Pentium D dual-core, 1gig RAM, 400gig HD, dual graphics cards- connected to TV, and two 24" flat panel monitors.

[Misc. General Area]

-Printer, 7 mid-range surround-speakers + another sub-woofer, 2 phones, 2 lamps, a cable modem.........And one man who forgets to get up and eat,bathe,sleep on occasion.


Are my folks right? Is this affecting my health, (as my dad says, "Looks like there's not going to be any more grand kids"). As I said in the beginning, kind of silly, but my folks got me thinking, let me know what you think.


nos

I haven't heard about anything like that.

In ergonomics I can see how using a keyboard would kill your wrists and staring at those 24" ( ) displays can go heavy on your eyes. But unless the damage is really serious I don't see how it would effect any eventual grand kids.

How a electrostatic discharge affects the body I don't know, but I don't think that it is very significant. Besides, you can always ground yourself.

The only thing I've heard about electromagnetic interference is how it affects other electrical equipment, but it shouldn't be a problem unless you sit astride on you tower since the range is something like 15-20 cm at most.

I havent heard anything before.
I would be more worried about the food you eat.
They add petrolium,food coloring,artifical chemicals and pesticides and more to the food you eat.
Who really needs really orange carrots lol??!!

Hello,





Yes, I agree, I think the prospects of jeopardizing future offspring is just pops way of teasing me for not following the family tradition of being a Carpenter. I crossed that bridge, and enjoy what I do much more these days.



I must admit, at one point I was concerned about frying the curcuits in my PC when tinkering with it. So to minimize the event from occurring, I tinkered while wearing my birthday suit. But, now I don't worry, I just wear shoes (rubber sole's) and Electrostatic Wristband.

And surprisingly enough, my eyes are not affected to much by my monitors. There are some pretty handy settings to adjust the intensities. Plus, I spent plenty of time tweaking the font, icons, windows, menu's and everything else, to look right with a 1920x1200 resolution.







Thanks for the reassurance, and you gave me an idea. I think I might test the prospect of artificially engineered carrots increasing nocturnal visibility over organically grown carrots. This may help my productivity, because I tend to prefer the graveyard shift for my labor intensive word processing. lol!!!


nos

In the long run it is going to affect your eyes. Staring at something at the same distance for long period of time is going stretch and wear out the lens in your eye. That is why you're supposed to spend some time every hour or so to stare of in the distance.

Yes, I suppose you are right, we all could use a little constructive day dreaming to ease the strain. And I think I have actually got a sunburn before form prolonged exposure......someone needs to formulize a form of sunblock, and name it "PC #ffffff, or RGB 255 PC".


nos

^^ lol

To be honest, I don't think any one knows what the effects of elctro-etc.

Just recently have we been bombarded with so many electrical devices for our daily uses. And now wireless technology passes through my house 24/7. lol. radio freq's, BLuetooth, etc etc.

For now, nothing is wrong... however, we HAVE TO wait for the long term and see way later how this affects humans. I don't think this area has been researched. Besides, what lab has a mice or person with a plasma tv on next to thier heads 24/7?