Are you sitting comfortably?

If you work for prolonged periods at a Visual Display Unit, more than about four hours a day, there can be associated health risks if you don't get this right.

The word ergonomic" is desperately over used when talking about office furniture products, what do we actually mean by it? Simply that the job or task should be fitted to the worker and the products to the user; the aim is to maximise productivity while minimising operator fatigue and discomfort.

The first port of call for official advice within the UK is the Health and Safety Display Screen Equipment Regulations of 1992 (amended 2002). Within this influential report the guidelines explain that the work chair should be stable and allow freedom of movement and a comfortable position; that the seat should be adjustable in height and that the seat back should be adjustable in both height and tilt.

Another significant report, which makes recommendations that are considered good practice, but are not mandatory, is the British Standard EN ISO 9241-5:1999. Here the advice is that optimum viewing distance between your face and the screen (for office work in the seated position) is 600mm. As a rough guide this equates to placing your monitor about an arm's length away.

In the Health & Safety (DSE) regulations "Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals" it's recommended that a monitor should be able to tilt and swivel easily to suit your needs; that the image on screen should be legible and flicker-free and should be free from glare and reflections. By straining to look up or down at a monitor screen at an unnatural angle you run the risk of placing additional strain on the neck, shoulders and lower back. Most guidelines state that a correctly adjusted display, using a monitor support arm, has the top of the viewable area of the display at eye level and that the screen should be angled upwards to face you.

The switch from CRT monitors to light weight LCD screens had significant implications for improved ergonomics. Previously these rather cumbersome CRT boxes" sat on the corner of a desk and you had to position yourself around it, the new generation of light weight flat screen monitors can be attached to monitor mounts which enable you to adjust every aspect of the screen's position.

There is a plethora of products available which can help adapt your seating position precisely to suit you: arm-rests, foot-rests, lumbar supports, laptop stands, the list goes on and on. Chairs don't simply go up and down any more: many modern task chairs have up to twenty separate adjustment mechanisms, enabling literally thousands of different seating permutations. Monitor arms are becoming increasingly commonplace and are used to adjust computer equipment to precisely the right height and distance for you. However, regardless of how good the office equipment you use, if you don't have an understanding of ergonomic best practice, even the most sophisticated, chairs, desks and LCD monitor mounts are all rendered redundant.