Their computer is a really good way for many people who suffer from Multiple-Chemical-Sensitivity Syndrome to stay in touch with the outside world. Additionally it can be used to make money, as leaving the house can be quite a challenge.

Unfortunately, almost all computers contain numerous toxic and carcinogenic substances, that make it very difficult for people with chemical sensitivities to use them at all or over longer periods of time.

These toxins and carcinogens affect all computer users. The big difference is, a person with chemical sensitivities has an allergic reaction, many times instantly, to these substances.

“Healthy” people are affected, too. Symptoms could range from “almost nothing”, “a tad more tired” in the evening after working a day in front of the computer, to “a more severe cold” instead of a lighter one.

Now, What Triggers the Reactions?

1. Brominated Flame Retardants (BFR), Tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA)
Brominated flame retardants are used, in the form of Tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA), on the electronics to avoid the spread of fire. Previously they were also widely used in the plastic parts of computer cases and keyboards.

Many people with Multiple-Chemical-Sensitivity Syndrome tell us that they are allergic to those. TBBPAs are chemically bound in the epoxy, but small amounts of the substance seem to actually gas out. It seems even very low levels can affect people with [tag-ice]chemical sensitivities[tag-ice].

2. Plasticizers
These substances are unregulated. Most of them are likely “gassing out”, adding to the substance mix around the computer.
If a plastic is getting brittle or less flexible over time, it has been out-gassing.

3. Toxic and Carcinogenic Manufacturing Residue
These are the most underreported and unregulated substances in a computer. The biggest culprit seem to be the substances used during the soldering process of the electronics. The solder flux/washing solution leave a slightly “greasy” look and feel on electronics.

These substances can contain carcinogenic and toxic substances. Soldering waste is hazardous waste in some countries, but not in most countries where electronics are actually manufactured.

Read the article “Toxic and Carcinogenic Chemicals in Computers” for more information.

What Can Be Done?

Reducing and/or partially eliminating all of the above seems to make the computer acceptable for most of the chemical sensitivities sufferers.

Environmentally friendly computers reduce brominated flame retardants and the toxic and carcinogenic substances by over 95%. The reductions combined with optimized electromagnetic shielding, low noise levels and ergonomic design make these computers usable for people with chemical sensitivities out of the box or within days of unpacking.

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Todd Woody of the Green Wombat blog reports that Dell announced today their Zero Carbon Initiative.

Flowing with the “green word of the day”, in this case “Global Warming” and “Zero Carbon Initiative” is the easy step to take. Follow the flow, instead of being ahead or creating the flow.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it is a bad thing to work on the “zero carbons”.

But, is it enough? Even close?

Computer and electronics manufacturing is usually a “dirty business”. Toxic and cancer causing substances are used and released into the environment during the manufacturing process. Those very same substances are also left as residue on the components. They gas out while in your office or home.

Many people, especially those with Multiple-Chemical-Sensitivity-Syndrome can tell you what happens to them when they are exposed to a computer manufactured in this conventional way.

The toxic and carcinogenic substances are additionally a problem later, when the computer is decommissioned and needs to be recycled, dismantled, etc.

The commonly used flame retardant Tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA) is not regulated anywhere and has recently been linked to prostate cancer, obesity, and other diseases. See our other blog entries for more information.

If you feel tired after working all day with your computer, this is a combination of

• electromagnetic radiation from your computer, cell phone, etc. draining your body’s energy field
• outgassing of toxic and [tag-tec]carcinogenic[tag-tec] substances. Your body has to spend energy to get rid of them. That’s energy you could spend on something else, like work, and if your work is not fun, on fun stuff.
• noise. Constant background noise drains your energy level, too.
• ergonomic problems. Non ergonomic keyboards, wrong position of monitor, keyboard and mouse, create muscle strains and deplete your body. A tense neck/shoulder area has caused many headaches.

The technology to avoid or reduce those factors significantly, by 80%, 90%, 97%, has been around for many years.

To find out more about the toxins and cancer causing substances, how to get around noise and improve the ergonomics of your workstation setup, subscribe to our Free E-Class “Secrets of Healthier & Greener Computing”.

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Particulate dust, very small particles that are smaller then 1/10th of a human hair, is responsible for the death of up to 370,000 Europeans per year and shortens the average life expectancy by about 3 years, reported the German SWR radio station today.

Dust sources are for example the particulates that come of your car tires when you’re driving. In a household or office environment the bigger particulate sources are laser printers and copiers and vacuums.

To reduce the particulate dust at the workplace, best is to replace laser printers, with ink jet printers and solid ink printers. These printers don’t use toner. Also, open windows and doors as much as possible.

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A “Computer Manufacturer” is merely a computer assembler, basically all “waste” at the manufacturer is packaging materials, and maybe some product that showed up from the manufacturer and doesn’t work and is not worth repairing.

The manufacturing of the electronics, enclosures, etc. usually happens in plants that are not regulated by environmental manufacturing processes. They manufacture components that fulfill regulations in the destination country, but the way how they are manufactured is not regulated.

So what does it mean?
Not Much.
Alright, the heavy metals are gone. They use lead-free solder.

But what else?

If a manufacturer announces that they comply to ROHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substances) and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive, or the newer EPEAT, which is kind of a combination of the two, what does it mean?

None of those directives regulates any of the toxic and carcinogenic substances commonly used in electronics manufacturing. Also, they regulate waste treatment after the end of product life, not waste treatment of the manufacturing process.

Complying with environmental regulations is easy when most of the substances are not regulated. In most places in the world, manufacturing is “easy” … all the toxic stuff just blows out into the air, seeps into the ground, or ends up in surface landfills.

To find out more about the toxins and cancer causing substances used in computers, and how you can avoid most of them, sign up for our Free E-Class “Secrets of Healthier Computing”

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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is currently having their conference in San Francisco. According to an article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung today, they said that lab experiments with bisphenol-A, a chemical that mimics estrogen, made the lab animals fat and its appearance in “nature” also coincides timing-wise with the increase of overweight and obese people.

Bisphenol-A is a plasticizer in practically all plastics that come in contact with our food and many more. It is used as can liner, plastic wrap, plastic containers, plastic bags, etc.

It is also part of the plastics in computers. Most computer motherboards contain about an ounce of Tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA) as a flame retardant. These flame retardants gas out slowly and then at the end of life there is a risk that they end up in the ground water, etc.

There are still many studies that claim that Tetrabromobisphenol-A is “no danger” to the environment and humans, as it is “not bio-accumulative”. However, recently it has also been linked to prostate cancer.

In our Free E-Class “Secrets to Healthier Computing” you can find out how you can avoid 97% of the bisphenol that normally used in computers.

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A couple German newspapers wrote about a study on “health risks of toner dust” by toxicologist Volker Mersch-Sundermann this weekend. According to the study the dust exposure in a room with a copy machine or printer can double.

Worse, when the printer starts, ultra-fine dust can be blown into the room. Those ultra-fine dust particles can reach the blood stream through the lungs. The dust consists of a complex mixes of copper and nickel, which can be responsible for allergies, as well as highly toxic tin compounds and ozone.

Mersch-Sundermann says, they are more concerned about the components than the concentration of the dust. The long-term exposure and impact of the dust for chronic illnesses is the biggest concern. Experiments with lung cell culture show that the DNA of those cells can be damaged when they come in contact with the dust, which can increase the risk of tumors.

People with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome should be very concerned about the concentration and the composition of the dust. I talked to one toner victim a couple of days ago, who told me that toner exposure and then the ride home in a brand new car put her over the edge and she’s been with MCS since then.

Toner dust has for years been suspect to be linked to chronic asthma and potentially other chronic illnesses.

Sensitive people or people concerned about their health, and people diagnosed with Multiple-Chemical-Sensitivity-Syndrome should stay away from laser based copiers and printers. An ink jet or solid ink jet as available by various manufacturers is the better choice.

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Imagine that you wake up tomorrow and feel incredibly tired, even though you just had a full night’s rest. You go to work, but while walking through a hall, by the copy machine and the out-gassing of paint, carpet, plastics, you are overwhelmed with nausea.

For many people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome (MCS), this is reality.

Recently, stories about multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome made national news, as in the October 19, 2006 story in the New York Times about Colorado resident Caryl Shonbrun and her efforts to avoid illness from offending chemicals. The story, “Seeking Modern Refuge from Modern Life” describes how Caryl and her husband moved to Fort Collins to build a chemical free house and succeeded, to a degree.

Her balance can come off quickly, she was greatly affected when one of their neighbors puts pesticides on their lawn. Modern medicine has no answer to that condition so they are practically on their own. Over 80,000 chemicals are surrounding us, the interaction of those chemicals is completely unknown, for example a certain kind of carpet and certain kind of paint could create a problem, while the carpet by itself and the paint by itself doesn’t.

How are you Feeling?

You may be wondering as you sit in front of your computer and feeling quite normal, what MCS has to do with computers? The problem of potentially offensive chemicals in computers lies within the case of your desktop or notebook and in the construction of its components.

Motherboards of almost all computers are manufactured in oxygen filled environments. Toxic and carcinogenic solder flux and many times even a toxic and carcinogenic washing solution to get the flux off the board, have to be used to manufacture the electronics.
Once the computer sits on or under your desk, these toxic chemicals can gas out when the computer warms or heats up and is then distributed in your work environment by the cooling fans.

So how does this affect you? You have made it this far in the article and probably aren’t feeling too ill I assume. While the chemicals from computers may not produce noticeable symptoms in everyone, that doesn’t mean there aren’t negative impacts on the body. Just because you don’t notice feeling ill, doesn’t mean your body isn’t having to expend extra energy to combat any side affects and “detox” your body from chemicals coming from your desktop or laptop.

In our Free E-Class “Secrets to Healthier Computing” you can learn more about how to avoid many of these toxic and carcinogenic substances that you can currently find in your computer.

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Much like the first Americans who experienced nuclear power, or a TV set in their home, the health repercussions of computers are not entirely known. It is a sobering thought that those who have spent their lives bathed in the glow of their monitors may find themselves decades from now in poor health, with conditions caused from any number of harmful emissions from their desktops, whether chemical or electromagnetic.

The Hot Topic

Like stilted houses on hurricane coasts, laptops of today seem to be climbing higher and higher off of workspaces in dorm rooms, offices and coffee shops. The “hot” issue with laptops is exactly this. Batteries in laptops run hot; sometimes so hot that they can cause the computer to shut down, that is, if the user can still handle the keys. As a result, these notebook computers are being hefted higher and higher off of their desks. Sometimes this is done with proper stands and other times with books or coasters, either way it is meant to allow for proper heat ventilation.

A recent report by Stephen H. Wildstrom on Business Week Online sheds more light as to why exactly most laptops run so hot. According to the article, the problem lies with the lithium ion batteries nestled inside of most modern laptops. Lithium ion batteries are great because they generate enough power to support high performance laptops with high processing speeds. However, as the battery meets the processor’s need for power, it heats up. This is mainly due to the fact that laptops are small, compact and very poor at allowing heat to escape from their innards.

While overheated laptops are certainly an inconvenience and uncomfortable to use, there are more potentially lethal and destructive surprises waiting within lithium ion batteries. Wildstrom says that lithium ion batteries rely on electronic circuits, a sort of fail-safe so to speak, to prevent violent chemical reactions. Unfortunately, as of late, these systems seem to be failing in the notebook computers of a couple major notebook manufacturers.

However, heat doesn’t seem to be the only problem facing the laptops of today. In order to compensate for the heat, cooling fans blast on at a high RPM, generating a noise that sounds like a fighter jet turning on its afterburners directly overhead.

While laptops are good for people when on the go, it seems that many people are simply using their notebooks all the time, even when seated at their home office, or designated workplace.

Because of this, the user’s productivity goes down due to the distracting blasts of noise from the cooling unit, his health is jeopardized and put at risk due usually poor ergonomic setup of the workplace and to the overheated batteries, when in reality, they could be using other methods of computing that would prove more productive.

Turning Green

So how are these problems to be solved? A better ergonomic choice is to use a notebook stand with an external keyboard and mouse to have a better physical position, with the notebook battery removed. However the noise and the higher level of radiation are still there.

What can be done?

The best choice is a silent and environmentally friendly desktop computer. The computer can be tucked away; the keyboard, mouse and monitor can be set up ergonomically. Ideally the screen is about 25 inches away. The top of the screen is at eye level. The keyboard and mouse are in a light color to keep the contrast difference to the monitor to a minimum and help reduce potential eyestrain.

Constant exposure to electromagnetic radiation due to not so well shielded computer cases and electronics increases stress levels as the body has to spend energy to maintain its own energy field. Once you start working with a well shielded and silent computer you’ll feel the difference very quickly.

A high quality, green and silent computer can also increase productivity up to 20%. Michael Kim of InspiredTraffic.com reported increases of 10 to 20% since switching to a GreenMachineShop.com desktop. He had been using mostly his notebook before. Now the notebook is only for the road. As a side effect, he reduced his electricity bill by about 30%. The silent computer made him turn off all other noise sources in the office. And he feels fresher after the work day is done.

He also reports that the TCO’03 compliant monitor causes much less stress to his eyes than before. The TCO’03 rating means that the monitors are built to the highest ergonomic and environmental standards.

To the best of our knowledge, GreenMachineShop.com’s desktops are currently the only truly “green computers.” Although many other companies say their computers are “green” because they offer a buy back program and eliminated heavy metals, mostly lead, this simply isn’t going to improve health conditions in the workplace or at home if the computers themselves are constructed in an unhealthy way.

The Next Step

Now its time for you to decide what is the best way to improve your surroundings. Think of your families or employees well being. Create the healthiest and most environmentally friendly computer workplace and reap the immediate benefits.

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Over the past week “Computer Vision Syndrome” has been in the news. The latest story in “The Frederick News-Post” titled “Prolonged computer use can lead to vision problems”.

The article states that more than 88 million people who use computers for more than 4 hours per day suffer from computer vision syndrome, that’s about a quarter of the total population of the U.S.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates the enormous cost for workman’s comp, to the economy, and employers: In 2002, employers reported a total of 487,900 lost workdays due to work-related musculo-skeletal-disorders (MSDs), representing nearly 50% of all lost work days. On top of these productivity costs, employers have paid approximately $20 billion annually in direct worker’s compensation costs. Indirect costs, like lower productivity at work, etc. add another $60 billion, for a total of $80 billion dollars.

The articles quotes Dr. Frishman, an optometrist from Frederick, Maryland, that the top of the monitor should be at the same level when you stretch your arms out. That would mean that I had to dig my monitor into my desk. The correct location of the monitor is: top of screen at or just below eye level, not shoulder/arm level.

Here are 8 tips to reduce or even eliminate most symptoms:

• Use a TCO’03 compliant monitor. Not only are they more environmentally friendly than other monitors, TCO’03 also requires compliance with ergonomic standards: contrast, resolution, brightness, adjustability, etc.
• The area behind the monitor should be lit, too. If it is all dark around your monitor (or TV for that matter), the eye has to constantly adjust between bright and dark.
• Use a light colored keyboard. Dark, black keyboards create eye strain for the same reason. Ideally the area on your desk where the computer is should be in “lighter” colors.
• If you need reading glasses, they won’t work with your computer. The monitor should be about arms length away (25?), books and papers only about the length of your forearm (15?). Ask your optometrist what he can do for you. Zeiss Optical has special lenses called “Gradal RD”
• Avoid glare, reflections, etc. from windows, lamps, etc.
• Look away at least every 15 minutes, look out the window. For example in Germany, every computer worker has to be able to look out a window from their chair.
• The human attention span is typically between 20 and 45 minutes. Find your attention span, set an alarm and walk away from your desk for a couple of minutes (if you can, don’t blame me if you get fired)
• If you use a notebook, the notebook has to be off your desk to bring you monitor to eye level. Get a notebook stand. This will also prolong the life and increase the stability of your notebook, because it runs cooler. Don’t forget to remove the battery when it is charged.

What are you waiting for? Time to change your habits and office layout?

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Yesterday I saw an article by Meg Nugent of Newhouse News Service in the local newspaper about Computer Vision Syndrome.

Computer [tag-tec]eye strain[tag-tec] caused by low quality monitors, too much time spent in front of a computer monitor, or poor ergonomic setup, with reflection glare, etc.

The picture coming with the article shows a 4 or 5th grader hunched over a notebook, eyes about 4 inches away from the screen. The correct distance is about 25 inches. The correct distance for reading on paper – books, newspapers, etc. – is about 15 inches.

Rule of thumb: Sit arm length away from the monitor and the length of your forearm from all printed matter.

If you are using a notebook, that would mean your arms should be stretched, if you are an adult. Small kids can’t even reach the keyboard!!! Does it make sense to type with stretched arms?

What the article didn’t mention, eye strain can also be caused or additionally worsened by a black keyboard. Everybody, even people who type with 10 fingers, look up and down between keyboard and monitor. The contrast difference between a black/dark keyboard and the bright lit screen creates additional eye strain.

Being hunched over a notebook is causing bad posture, the spine is round, the head tucked between shoulders. Most people hunch over and then look up a little bit, while ideally the neck should be straight and the chin slightly tilted towards the chest. Hands and arms are all clawed in.

Being hunched over not only curves the spine and shortens the muscles in the front but also takes volume away in the chest and doesn’t the person to breathe freely.

If it has to be a notebook, please give yourself or your kid a break and use a notebook stand to get the screen into correct position and plug in an external keyboard to allow for an upright and ergonomic posture.

Make sure there is no reflection on the screen from windows, etc.
Your eyes, your whole body will say thank you and feel much fresher once your done working.

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