Bengal Engineering and Science University in collaboration with National Institute of Occupational Health under Indian Council of Medical Research will conduct a study on the occupational health hazards amongst IT professionals. Claiming that there are no baseline data to detect the number of IT professionals falling prey to stress and fatigue related to work pressure specially in the field of information technology, Mr Debesh Das, state IT minister today said, more than 70,000 professionals in the state are employed in the IT sector and many fall prey to occupational hazards associated with work stress. "Heavy workload, prolonged working hours, burden to complete projects in time and unhealthy food pattern contributes to health hazards amongst IT professionals and there is a need for a study to assess how many people are falling prey to this menace. People working in this sector have to work for 8 to 10 hours on the computer, thus facing chronic eye irritation and to work out this problem there is a need for multi faceted health promotion activities to be conducted in the IT companies,' Mr Das said. While deliberating in a workshop conducted by ROHC, Dr Nikhil Ranjan Banerjee, vice chancellor of Besu said, "with the increase of human resource in IT sector, the occupational hazards associated with the work would increase and there is a need for more awareness programme in the private companies to curb the threat. Sedentary lifestyle coupled with psychosocial stresses add to this menace.' Experts also claims that occupational health hazard also leads to reproductive problems amongst females and most often bad postures and indulgence in smoking and drinking adds to the problem. It leads to infertility and other post delivery complications. Expecting that the baseline survey could help to overcome such health problems, Dr A Roy Chowdhury, deputy director associated with ROHC (Eastern region) said that the study would help to detect the number of workers facing such crisis and consequently would propose ways to curb stress associated with work place.