Health and safety risk increase with night shifts, says BMJ
The prestigious British Medical Journal has indicated on its website that shift work can lead to dramatically higher health and safety risks, with the night shift identified as the riskiest of all.
The BMJ has found that both strokes and heart attacks are more common among those who work in shifts. More than 30 studies contributed to the results, with a total of more than 2 million people analysed as part of the research effort. Shift workers in general have a 25% higher risk of heart attack or stroke, says the BMJ website, which went on to point out that night shift workers have a better than 40% higher risk.
The BMJ did not positively identify a cause and effect relationship to explain these higher levels of health and safety risk, but did point out that shift work is associated with a range of unhealthy habits. Those who work shifts tend to eat more junk food and have more problems sleeping. Exercise is also lower among employees who perform shift work. All three of these behaviours are associated with higher levels of heart problems including heart attacks. The BMJ researchers, however, say that even when these factors were taken into consideration, health and safety for shift workers was still problematic as compared to other types of workers.
Daniel Hackam, a clinical pharmacologist at SPARC, the Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Centre, commented on the need for health and safety training to help workers deal with these increased risks. He said, “Shift workers should be educated about cardiovascular symptoms in an effort to forestall or avert the earliest clinical manifestations of disease.”
