Shift Working Heart Disease Risk

Working a mix of day and night shifts may cause a greater risk of dying from heart disease than working fixed days or nights only, according to a new study from Japan.

Meanwhile in the UK, The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has produced a new book that aims to improve the understanding of shift work and its impact on health and safety.

The report, in the July edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology, also showed that the effect of heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking was even greater for individuals who worked rotating shifts.

A team at the University of Occupational and Environmental Health in Kitakyushu looked at 17,649 men aged 40 to 69 participating in a study of cancer risk.

Nearly 84 percent chiefly worked days, while about 5 percent worked nights only, and roughly 11 percent were on rotating shifts. Over a period of about 13 years, 1363 of the men died, with 86 of these deaths due to heart disease.

Men who worked rotating shifts were 60 percent more likely than those who worked day shifts to have diseases of the heart and blood vessels, and they were 2.32 times more likely to die of heart disease such as a heart attack.Men who had other risk factors for heart disease, the effect of rotating shift work was even stronger.

For example, rotating shift workers with high blood pressure were 3.4 times more likely to die of heart disease than day workers with high blood pressure.

However, men who worked fixed nights were at no greater risk for heart disease or death from related causes than those who worked days only.

Past studies have suggested that difference in health among people working different shifts may be due to differences in heart disease risk factors -- for example, people who work nights may be more likely to smoke than those who work days. However, in the current study, the effect of rotating shift work persisted even after the researchers used statistical techniques to adjust for such risk factors.

Shift work is known to affect circadian rhythms and body functions such as blood pressure, heart rate and hormone secretion.

It may be more difficult for people's circadian rhythms to adapt to a rotating shift than to steady nighttime work, the report's authors suggest.

According to the HSE, in the UK, more than 3.5 million people are employed as shift workers. They work in a wide variety of industries including the emergency services, healthcare, the utilities, transport, manufacturing, entertainment and retail. Poorly designed shift-working arrangements and/or long working hours may put them at risk of fatigue, accidents, injuries and ill health.

The HSE book explains why we workers should be concerned about shift work, drawing on the evidence available in the scientific literature. It goes on to set out an approach to managing the risks from shift work and provides useful advice and good practice guidelines to help inform the design or redesign of shift work rotas.

Further information on the issues concerned and the advice the HSE have published, can be found here

Source: Reuters HSE

Designed, Hosted and Maintained by Union Safety Services