Coughing Cashier? New POS Printers Can Trigger Asthma
Written by Evan SchumanIT may not the only ones allergic to integrating new POS systems. A report in the May 28 New England Journal of Medicine found that some cashiers have been showing asthma symptoms after new POS installations, as they apparently react to chemicals on the receipt paper.
“The machines print on thermal paper coated with a chemical called N-propyl-acrylamide and acrylate tints,” said a report on the article in Health Day. “After performing all tests, we demonstrated that our patient was sensitized, meaning she is allergic to a specific substance, in this case, acrylates contained in the thermal paper.” Now there’s a TCO factor that most IT departments would have overlooked: the potential for increased sick time and lower productivity. Maybe upgrade the POS system but keep the old printers?
One Comment | Read Coughing Cashier? New POS Printers Can Trigger Asthma
Leave a Reply
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.

-Christine

May 28th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Someone needs to get a life. I’m sure the named chemical is are in any number of other products. S is 1 in 1000 an epidemic? Work is obviously detrimental to ones health.