OSHA STALLS ON REPETITIVE STRAIN

Responding to Congressional pressure, the Labor Department has decided not to issue any rules onrepetitive strain injuries, the painful symptoms often attributed to workranging from chicken-plucking to word-processing. In their push to reduce government regulations, Republican lawmakers have argued againstsetting any RSI standards. Although President Clinton recently vetoed a GOP bill that included a provision blocking the creation of RSI rules, Labor Department officials said that the current climate on Capital Hill made it too difficult to set any meaningful regulations. Department figures say that a variety of musculoskeletal disorders afflict over 700,000 people each year, but many doctors say that there is no medical evidence linking some of these disorders to the jobs patients perform.