The 50th Annual Spring Congress of the Society for Occupational Science (GfA) took place last week at ETH Zurich. Participants came from a number of associations, such as the Swiss Society of Ergonomics, the Swiss Society for Occupational Medicine, the Swiss Society for Occupational Hygiene and the German Society for Occupational and Environment Medicine. The congress included more than 125 different workshops, poster presentations and lectures, was organised by Helmut Krueger. He is has been professor at the ETH Institute of Hygiene and Applied Physiology (1) for more than 20 years. In view of his coming retirement, Krueger and his work – especially as a builder of bridges between physics and medicine, between science and society – was honoured last Thursday during the congress.

Ergonomical systems analyses, the physiological organisation of work, health promotion in the workplace, computer aided co-operation and environmental ergonomics, these were the subject matter of the congress. Krueger addressed their importance and their development in his speech.

Taking changes into account

Krueger talked about ideas and concepts that had been dealt with at numerous smaller events during the congress. "Work + health" is a field of transdisciplinary (2) co-operation, which brings together disparate specialist disciplines with very different working paradigms. He understands ergonomics – the science of the possible potential and limits of workers and the best mutual adaptation of human beings with their working conditions – as a turnstile, a mediator between disparate paradigms. Krueger: "Occupational physiology is one of the foundations of ergonomics. Occupational physiology is duty bound to the natural science paradigm of empirics. It can only fulfil this mandate, however, by taking changes in the problems of the modern working world into account.

Looking for new methods of resolution

In the modern place of work, for example, physiological parameters remain useful indicators, above all for measuring physical reaction to strain or stress, but, says the scientist, some things have changed. He points out that mental processes have started to replace the physical with the advent and increasing use of the computer. This leads specialists to ask themselves to what degree stress arising from mental processes via data processing can be illustrated today by physiological processes – and if they could indeed be captured with physiological methods.

The shift to mental requirements would be indirectly mirrored in the collection of occupationally occasioned stress. Krueger points out that painful conditions of the muscular and skeletal systems, and reactions to and consequences of stress was top of the list in public awareness, not essentially job-related illnesses. Pressure time was widely seen as an important factor. As far as place of work was concerned, for example, it was no longer auditive damage, but annoyance caused by noise that people are more aware of on a daily basis.

"Work and health"?...

"Can occupational physiology really still produce an innovative contribution to the issue of 'Work + health'?", asks Krueger and answers his own question with conviction. "To a great extent the active shaping of the information society has left occupational science behind."

Klaus Scheuch, president of the German Society for Occupational and Environmental Medicine (left) and Mariano Menozzi, honours the achievements of Helmut Krueger (right), in whose honour the congress was held this year at ETH Zurich. large

"Work and health" are usually emphasised as a unit with the aim of health, but the term does not deal solely with the aspect of health. Work, according to Krueger, is even a prerequisite for health. In view of the fact that the number of old people is increasing he considers that public debate will have to resolve the question of how to develop the capability to work over a longer life span – with all this entails – to arrive at a work culture that enables people to work longer.

...or "Health and Work"?

An active shaping of occupational systems, regardless of social-medical aspects, must be seen as an inherent value of the term "Work and Health", the scientist says. Ergonomics – at least notionally – is the discipline that aims above all at the configuration in the system "Work + Health". It stands between a natural science- oriented research and an engineering science-oriented shaping and development. In other words, shaping occupational systems is neither a pure natural science nor a pure engineering science.

Professor Krueger emphasises,"The field of 'Work + Health' can only be cultivated by transdisciplinary methods." Knowledge arising from the natural sciences to solve problems was provided, for the main part, by occupational psychology, physiology, medicine, physics, chemistry and occupational hygiene.

Current areas of research

"Current problems being addressed in occupational science have to do with mental processes in the widest sense. This is where new fields of work are being created," says Krueger with reference to developments in occupational physiology. Krueger illustrates the importance of information as a theme of occupational physiological fundamental research using an example that also appears on the programme of contributions at the congress; the influence of light on biological rhythmics. There were indications of "sensors" in the eyes that were especially sensitive to blue light, thus providing a new approach to shaping night-work processes. But dynamically created light also influences alertness during normal office hours, while other light can produce sleepiness.

"Work + Health" brings different work paradigms together in a transdisciplinary manner. Krueger: "In this sense the continued training and education of specialists in Switzerland for occupational science cannot to be found in mono-specialities, but as an integrating postgraduate course on 'Work + Health' (3)." The teaching of special, explicit factual knowledge of individual job-related illnesses or analytical methods to determine specific stress factors in the surroundings; these could not be the most important things. This had to be appropriate training for transdisciplinary acting. Professor Krueger postulates, "The boundaries – between ergonomics and work psychology – must fall. An appropriate didactic approach to teaching, for example, would be project-oriented learning and teaching."