Beware employees! If it is the top boss who is bullying, the best course is to start looking for another job to avoid health hazards, suggests a new study.

The study found that Americans are especially likely to be bullied at work yet only one in three identified themselves as targets.

Newsweek quotes the author of the study Pamela Lutgen-Sandvik of the New Mexico University as identifying bullying as a "persistent intimidating, malicious, insulting and exclusionary behaviour".

In a paper published in the Journal of Management Studies, Lutgen-Sandvik says not only victims but observers were more likely to report feeling stressed and dissatisfied with their jobs.

Talking back to a bully typically aggravates the behaviour, Lutgen-Sandvik is quoted as arguing.

A better strategy is to alert superiors, and if you can join forces with coworkers and complain as a group, you're twice as likely to succeed, Lutgen-Sandvik found.

Of course, sometimes it's the boss administering the doses of workplace humiliation -- small stresses that take a cumulative toll. "If the bad moments on the job outnumber the good, the best health choice may be to start polishing your resume," Newsweek quotes the paper as saying.

This was one of the five "little and not-so-little annoyances from dry eyes to rushed lunches" at work that was identified by Newsweek from various published studies that can adversely affect the health.

Believe it or not, even low-level noise in open-style offices result in stress, says a Cornell study quoted by Newsweek.

After randomly assigning 40 experienced clerical workers to either a quiet, or a mildly noisy open-style office for three hours, the researchers measured and compared the amount of epinephrine, a stress hormone, in their urine.

The workers in the noisier office were both more stressed and less likely to make ergonomic adjustments to their workstation.

"One possible reason is that under stress, people focus in on their main task," Cornell's Gary Evans, a leading expert on environmental stress, is quoted by Newsweek as saying.

Dilbert-style cubicles don't necessarily do the trick, the study says, adding sound travels through the gaps and the walls create a false sense of privacy.

Explain to cubicle neighbours that it's important for all of you to keep voices (and any noisemaking devices) low.

People who don't need to be on the phone constantly may find

noise-canceling headphones to be a big help. There are also a number of products that aim to block conversational noise around cubicles, it says.

Another study quoted by the magazine found that computer users risk tired, red eyes, burning and blurred or double vision.

The study, published in the Survey of Ophthalmology says that people blink up to 60 per cent less often while looking at the screen, causing dry-eye symptoms. The cornea is also sensitive to office hazards like dry air, airborne paper dust and ventilation fans.

To protect yourself, look away from the screen and at a distant object at least every 30 minutes, it says. Use eye drops if you feel strain. And if you wear reading glasses and work at a computer more than an hour a day, researchers recommend a pair of glasses especially designed for the distance you normally sit from the screen.

Sitting too long in a badly designed office chair can provoke both acute and chronic back pain, says another study.

So with that in mind, remember ergonomics, it advises, stressing the need to adjust the height of your chair and keyboard and the distance from the computer screen.

Newsweek quoted a World Health Organization report saying psychology also plays a big role in chronic pain. The report by rheumatologist Gorge Ehrlich says back pain can be a sign that you're bored or unhappy at work. If you've adjusted your workstation, try getting more exercise outside work to improve your mood, says Ehrlich.

Eating lunch out or at the desk while distracted by e-mails and phone calls tend to make a person overeat and choose wrong foods. The study suggests take enough time to chew food and most importantly, stay away from desk while eating.

Studies, Newsweek says, suggest that closer the proximity to those office snacks, the more likely a person gain weight.