Under "You can't make this stuff up"

New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation got so many handwritten comments on hydrofracking, that one of its employees responsible for scanning them into digital form has suffered a shoulder injury. No. Really.

Hydrofracking comments present new problem: Scanning shoulder

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is conducting an ergonomic review of a temporary office for scanning and logging the tens of thousands of responses after an employees' union lodged a complaint last month.

A worker assigned to the "bullpen" -- as the office has been dubbed -- suffered a shoulder injury in January that the union suspects may have been caused by an inefficient setup, said Wayne Bayer, a DEC steward for the Public Employees Federation.

The complaint, Bayer said, led to a shutdown of the scanning for "a day or two" last month. The union claims the injury was likely caused by "improper equipment, improper level of the equipment" or the motion of repeatedly operating the scanners, he said.