E-mail can be addictive. In an office world starved of human contact, the friendly sound of a computer bleep can make hearts race in the way that the quiet rumble of a fax never could. On the one hand, e-mail can be a constant fountain of attention, but on the other it can be a source of real stress.

"E-mail stress — what’s that?" asked Yelena Petrova, HR director at DHL, in response to my question as to whether or not she suffers from it. "E-mail is a part of my job and my life, but it doesn’t bother me," she continued. "Contemporary business would not be possible without e-mail; people would spend too much time on the phone and sending faxes."

That may be the case, but many people are bothered by the avalanche of e-mails that characterize a working day in the new-technology era. Galina Melnikova, vice president of HR at Citibank, is one such individual. She says she receives a minimum of 70 e-mails a day, most of which are general internal mail not addressed specifically to her.

Melnikova drew attention to a problem inherent in e-mail culture in any large international corporation: that often someone in a far-off country will send an e-mail to everyone in the company and that then, a huge number of people will answer it using the "reply to all" option.

Dr. Ivan Kirilov, a specialist in stress management at the American Medical Center, referred to stress as the epidemic of the past century. He says that although his patients haven’t referred specifically to e-mail-related stress, he expects that the guilt felt by those who don’t have the time to read all their e-mails is brought on by their constant striving for perfection and their search for the encouragement and approval they never get.

Please let me know if the electronic bug has bitten you, and send your comments to editor@theleader.com.