Light at the end?

UNTIL the mid-1990s, carpal tunnel syndrome was not taken seriously by the media. Although it, and other sorts of repetitive-strain injury (RSI), account for 34% of workplace injuries in America, and cost industry around $20 billion a year, it used to affect mainly manual labourers—chicken slaughterers, road-menders and so on. Then office workers began to be diagnosed with the disease, and reporters (who are office workers themselves, of course) noticed it. The result was a belief that people who use keyboards are at particular risk—a belief supported by the fact that in 1999, the most recent year for which American figures are available, 23% of reported cases were linked to typing.