The Health Index at Founders Memorial Library contains many brief summaries of articles filed since 1988 suggesting video display terminals (VDTs), or computer monitors, are potential health hazards. Read the articles behind those summaries and you’ll learn the following:

The Kaiser Permanente study found the rate of miscarriage among women who used VDTs more than 20 hours per week to be almost double the normal rate.

Computer monitors emit extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields. ELF fields have been found to alter brain chemistry in laboratory animals and interfere with the effectiveness of T-lymphocyte cells. These are a type of white blood cell which recognize and destroy cancer cells

After a two-year study of available evidence, the Environmental Protection Agency suggested in a preliminary report last year that ELF electromagnetic fields be classified as a “probable human carcinogen.”

The director of the EPA’s Office of Health and Environmental Assessment, Dr. William Farland, ordered the researchers’ recommendation be deleted.

The report found a relatively low but statistically significant effect of increased cancers among people in some occupational and residential settings.

University Radiation Safety Officer Deborah Rutland doesn’t believe the available information is sufficient to actually determine what the health risks might be. As part of her job at NIU, she monitors available research in the area of VDTs and electromagnetic health effects.

“It is a field that has only recently received attention and we are really only in the very early stages of assimilating the knowledge we have in terms of animal experiments, epidemiological studies, and cellular studies,” she said.

“We’ve got to wait until we get enough information in so that judgments can be made in terms of whether this really generates a health hazard.

“There is evidence now—good evidence—that there are some biological effects,” Rutland said. “But in terms of actually saying that there is a health risk, I don’t think that that is a fair assessment at this time.

“The data, I believe at this point, suggests that there are some biological interactions, particularly on a cellular level. I think that we are a long way from determining whether those biological changes, those biological effects, pose a significant health risk. I think that it is going to just take time to determine that,” said Rutland.

Rutland believes there is no immediate danger to computer users. “I think that the fact that we don’t have great numbers of people with quote ‘definitely associated health effects’ suggests that there is no immediate serious health threat,” she said.

Recently, Rutland tested some of the computer monitors around campus.

“We have done some testing of different units and we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary,” said Rutland. This does not mean that the units do not pose a health risk; said Rutland of the situation, “You’re in a gray area, there really are no guidelines, there are no regulations. What we did was look for readings that were unusually high.”

Most of a VDT’s magnetic radiation does not come out of the screen of a monitor, but out of the back.

Although she is not familiar with the Psychology/Mathematics computer lab on campus, where many computers are concentrated such that most computer keyboards are 18 inches from the backs of two monitors, she notes having computers close to others increases exposure to electromagnetic fields.

“It is preferable to have your computers a little bit spread out so that they are not all crammed into one corner, because you do have an additive effect. I think that one of the prudent things we can do is to try not to cram them all into too small a space,” Rutland said.

As to whether the computers are too close together in computer labs such as the Psych/Math lab, Rutland said, “That is something that it would be appropriate to look at, inasmuch as it wouldn’t take a great deal of funding to check.”

A New York Times article last year recommended workers sit at least two feet away from the front of a monitor and stay at least four feet away from the back or sides of a coworker’s monitor. At the Psych/Math lab, the average user must sit less than three diagonal feet away from the back of two monitors in order to use a computer.

When questioned about possible fetal damage resulting from VDT use, Rutland said, “There have been a number of studies. Again, we run into the problem of conflicting data. The Kaiser Permanente study did find a very weak association. There have been other studies that have indicated that there is perhaps a small increase in spontaneous abortions and no fetal abnormality risk increase. There have been a very limited number of studies, and the study populations, except for the Kaiser Permanente study, have been fairly small. It is tough to get a real good assessment with those numbers.

“That is confounded by the fact that, I think, there is somewhere between a 20 and 30 percent just natural spontaneous rate of abortion,” Rutland said.

Commenting on the higher miscarriage rate found in some studies, she said, “It is confounded. Confounders are things that cloud the water. Some of the confounders that have been associated with this is that computer workers tend to have a lot of ergonomical problems: they sit all day, the blood pools, generally it is a kind of high pressure job—hurry up, hurry up, get your data in,” she said.

“Those kinds of things have been clearly shown to have effects. Particularly when you are talking about someone who is pregnant and sitting all day in certain positions.

“The best way for people to ensure the maximum safety in using a monitor is just to sit back an arm’s length,” Rutland said. The strength of the field decreases rapidly as you move away from the source.

So are computers a health hazard or not?

“The verdict isn’t in. No one can say for sure whether they are or aren’t a health hazard. I think that we need to be prudent and that we need to do the simple things that can reduce the electromagnetic field exposure to people,” Rutland said.

On the international level, Sweden already has standards for acceptable levels of electromagnetic radiation for computer monitors. IBM developed and began marketing a computer monitor to meet that standard about a year ago, but it was only available for mainframe and midrange computer systems.

JVC has put some special screening on the back of their monitors and the component which generates the electromagnetic radiation is designed so that it meets Sweden’s standard. There are other manufacturers of low-radiation monitors available as well.

Presently, clear filters are available which block almost all electromagnetic radiation from the front of computer monitors. These filters are placed over the front of the monitor. According to Everett Moffat of Lan-Com, a Chicago based manufacturer of personal computers, these filters knock out more than 98 percent of the electromagnetic radiation coming from the front of the screen. The lowest cost model is about $60 each and costs less in bulk.

A computer monitor is “basically a television,” Rutland said.

But to whatever extent monitors pose a biological hazard, it is because, unlike a television, people sit very close to computer monitors.

At the local level, Rutland is satisfied with the university’s response. “I think the university is responding in some very appropriate ways. One is that I am keeping up with current information, in terms of possible hazards, in terms of what information is out there, staying current with that, so that if something significant comes along that the university needs to know about, it will be here.”