Like it or not, the jury is still out on the low frequency issue, and some companies may want to protect themselves legally—just in case—by transferring pregnant women from VDTs. Ideally you’d coordinate this policy with those regarding maternity leaves and other health benefits; then a woman would feel free to tell you immediately about her pregnancy instead of disguising it for as long as possible.
Even if radio frequency radiation is a culprit, there is some hope. Slesin notes that the flyback transformer is on the side or back of a computer monitor rather than in the front near the operator. That isn’t the best news for someone sitting near the flyback transformer of a coworker’s machine, but perhaps the VLF threat isn’t so great to someone without any other VDTs nearby. “With the right office layout,” says Mark Pinsky, editor of _VDT News_, “you might be able to greatly reduce exposure to VLFs fields. And obviously the risk to home computer users might be less without another machine around.”
Although VDTs have yet to be proven free of radiation risks, please note that groups like 9 to 5 and the Newspaper Guild have been using at least a few computers in their offices for several years. Don’t lie to your people that there’s nothing to worry about; do point out that the risks are low enough to justify computerization’s benefits.
“Can computer screens cause cataracts?” some employees might also ask.
Probably not. A NIOSH study at the Baltimore _Sun_ found no greater number of cataracts among VDT users than nonusers (although the researchers noted that the employees on VDTs averaged less than four years at the tube—perhaps not long enough to suffer the cataracts).
To be sure, strong microwave radiation indeed can lead to cataracts. But VDTs don’t give off microwaves, and no one has suggested that ELF and VLF are responsible for cataracts. Maybe there are other causes. Regardless, a certain percentage of people, some in their 30s or even late 20s, will always develop cataracts—whether or not they work in front of a tube.
They _are_ common—because, as mentioned earlier, some terminals force you to choose between the best hand-keyboard distance and the optimal eye-screen one.