This study was conducted to evaluate the difference of visual display terminal (VDT) workstation environment variables according to ages. The environment variable in VDT workstation is generally known to be affected by anthropometry data. However, muscle activity and fatigue are different according to ages. These differences raise the need of considering the age in designing VDT workstations.
At this study, there are 8 male volunteers participating, 4 in 20’s group and 4in 40’s group. Muscle activity, fatigue, subjective work load and pain have been measured using surface EMG and questionnaire from trapezius muscle in condition with and without arm rest. 4 measures has been used for this measurement: % MVC for muscle activity, normalized MF for fatigue, modified Borg’s RPE CR-10 scale for subjective work load and symptom score for pain.
4 measures showed more significant decrease with arm rest than without arm rest in experiment result (p<0.05). 3 measures except symptom score showed significant relationship with age with less (lower) average value in 40’s group than 20’s group (p<0.05). Also arm rest affected 40’s group more than 20’s group (p<0.05).
Therefore, this study shows that the age can be a critical variable in setting the environment variable. It is shown that %MVC and normalized MF can be utilized as objective measures in setting the environment of VDT workstation.
