H&S for laptops

[alexknight]

Hi

 

I was just wondering if any of you carry out health and safety for laptops and portable IT equipment?

 

If so do any of you have links to any info on how to carry this out as my school want me to produce a booklet to give to users on how to use a laptop safely?

 

Any help appreciated.

 

thanks

 

Alex

[pete]

Eyestrain "look into the distance every so often, not just stare at the screen"

Heat aka groin burn.

Blocking vents/fans.

Posture / regular breaks / good lighting

Letting us know when your power adaptor is popping, hissing and showing bare wires, rather than waiting for the DT technician to intervene with a fire extinguisher.

In relation to the above "don't twist the damn cable round and round like spaghetti until it tears the insulation".

 

It really depends if you're assuming your users are reasonably intelligent and concentrate on often overlooked aspects, or using the standard h&s approach which seems to be "assume they're dumb as a bag of rocks".

 

In which case you could start by warning them about the packaging:

 

http://thenperiod.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/choke-1.jpg

[alexknight]

I've noted the points you have made, and yes I have heard about the groin burn etc :-)

 

It just seems strange that there is not much on laptop H&S on the government H&S site nor on out County Council site :-(

 

So it looks like just using the normal workstation set up checklist?

 

Alex

[pete]

I'd use the workstation list and modify to suit.

 

Things like:

Laptop screen - more likely to be staring down (rather than straight ahead) - bad posture/neck ache chances increased.

Trailing power/network cables that would normally be cable-tied away / trunked on a fixed workstation.

 

Take a standard laptop, power adaptor, and network cable. Give them to a teacher and ask them to do something on the laptop for 10 minutes. Observe them and see what comes to mind. A favourite round here seems to be tripwires:

 

Dark computer room, I (slowly) walk towards the lightswitch only to find an OHP on the bench with the taut power cable across my path at ankle height.