Joanne Reitano is a professor of history at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens. She writes wonderful books about the history of the city and state, and has recently been spending many hours — sometimes all day — at her computer to revise her first book, “The Restless City.” But while sitting in front of the screen, she told me, “I developed burning in my eyes that made it very difficult to work.”

After resting her eyes for a while, the discomfort abates, but it quickly returns when she goes back to the computer. “If I was playing computer games, I’d turn off the computer, but I need it to work,” the frustrated professor said.

Dr. Reitano has a condition called computer vision syndrome. She is hardly alone. It can affect anyone who spends three or more hours a day in front of computer monitors, and the population at risk is potentially huge.

Worldwide, up to 70 million workers are at risk for computer vision syndrome, and those numbers are only likely to grow. In a report about the condition written by eye care specialists in Nigeria and Botswana and published in Medical Practice and Reviews, the authors detail an expanding list of professionals at risk — accountants, architects, bankers, engineers, flight controllers, graphic artists, journalists, academicians, secretaries and students — all of whom “cannot work without the help of computer.”

And that’s not counting the millions of children and adolescents who spend many hours a day playing computer games.

Studies have indicated 70 percent to 90 percent of people who use computers extensively, whether for work or play, have one or more symptoms of computer vision syndrome. The effects of prolonged computer use are not just vision-related. Complaints include neurological symptoms like chronic headaches and musculoskeletal problems like neck and back pain.

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Jeffrey R. Ungvary President