
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 14, 1991                   TAG: 9103140134
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDY FINDS VDTS DO NOT INCREASE MISCARRIAGE RISK

Pregnant women who work at video display terminals, the computer monitors that have become a fixture of the modern work place, are at no greater risk of suffering miscarriages than workers who do not use the terminals, according to a major government study published today.

An estimated 20 million American women use video display terminals on the job, said Teresa M. Schnorr, the epidemiologist who led the study by researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The study, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, followed reports over the last decade of miscarriages among groups of women who worked with VDTs in government and private offices, mostly in the United States and Canada.

The new NIOSH study found no increased risk of miscarriage from VDT use. "Even in women who used the VDT full time," Schnorr said, "those women had the same miscarriage rate as women who didn't use the VDT at all."

However, Schnorr noted that the study sheds no new light on potential risks associated with extremely low-frequency (ELF) radiation, a type of electromagnetic energy associated in some recent studies with an increased risk of cancer and miscarriages.

Schnorr said when the NIOSH study was planned, worries about possible health risks focused on very low frequency (VLF) emissions, the electromagnetic energy characteristic of computer terminals. ELF emissions are not unique to VDTs; they also are produced by power lines, electrical wires in the home and office, electric blankets and household appliances.

Because the NIOSH researchers found similar ELF exposure levels among both VDT users and non-users, Schnorr said the study does not indicate whether ELF exposure increased miscarriage risk.

"It's a separate issue," she said.

The NIOSH study, begun in 1984, tracked two groups of female telephone operators in eight Southeastern states.

by CNB