American workers are under-slept and over-tired.
Some 43 percent of workers say they do not get enough sleep to stay safe at work, according to a survey of 2,000 workers released Wednesday by the National Safety Council. That includes the ability to think clearly, make informed decisions and be productive and, in turn, avoid accidents. “We hope Americans recognize that impairment stems not just from alcohol and drugs, but lack of restorative rest,” says Deborah Hersman, chief executive of the organization.
This is backed up by a far broader body of research. “Highly sleepy workers are 70 percent more likely to be involved in accidents than non-sleepy workers and workers with chronic insomnia are far more likely than well-rested individuals to report industrial accidents or injuries,” according to data from the National Sleep Foundation. And people with excessive sleepiness who snore are twice as likely to be involved in workplace accidents.
Sometimes, accidents at work can be fatal, particularly those working in factories. Workers with sleep problems were nearly twice as likely to die in a work-related accident, a Swedish study of nearly 50,000 people over two decades found. And it’s also an obvious risk factor for people who drive for a living: Almost 20 percent of all serious car crash injuries are associated with driver sleepiness, independent of alcohol effects, the National Institutes of Health found.
Grueling and irregular working conditions often don’t help. The latest National Safety Council survey found 97 percent of Americans say they have at least one of the nine leading risk factors for fatigue, which include working at night or in the early morning, working long shifts without regular breaks, working more than 50 hours each week and enduring long commutes. And 76 percent say they feel tired at work, some 53 percent feel less productive and 44 percent have trouble focusing.
Adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night, but 30 percent report averaging less than six hours, according to the National Health Interview Survey. What’s more, previous research shows that people overestimate the amount of time they sleep by around 45 minutes, says James Maas, former chairman of the Department of Psychology at Cornell University who is widely credited with coining the term “power nap.”
“It’s not just the length of sleep that counts, but the quality of sleep,” says Adam Seidner, global medical director for workers comp at Travelers Companies Inc., an insurance company. Caffeine stays in your system three to five hours but could stay as long as 12 hours for some people. He says people shouldn’t exercise or drink alcohol less than six hours before going to sleep to avoid any interruptions.
Official government data suggests there are fewer workplace accidents than there used to be, but they remain a major nationwide problem. There were around 2.9 million work-related injuries and illnesses per year in the private sector in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 6.6 million two decades ago, due to increases in safety and health practices.
Lifting, carrying and lowering a material is the main cause of workplace accidents, accounting for nearly one-third, according to an analysis of more than 1.5 million workers compensation claims released last year by Travelers Companies Inc. Manufacturing and retail sectors suffered the most injuries from material handling (37 percent each), followed by the oil and gas industry (34 percent).
Despite advances in work safety oversight, there are still a lot of very hazardous workplaces, but they are not always the places you would think, says Peg Seminario, director of safety and health for the AFL-CIO federation of unions. Aside from oil and gas and construction workers, she says health-care workers have a high rate of ergonomic injuries from lifting patients. Fatigued worker productivity costs employers $1,200 to $3,100 per employee annually, the report found.
Work-related injuries and illnesses cost companies and taxpayers some $250 billion a year, according to research by J. Paul Leigh, a professor of health economics at the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at University of California, Davis. Worker’s compensation covers less than 25 percent of these costs. “The medical and indirect costs of occupational injuries and illnesses are sizable, at least as large as the cost of cancer,” his report found.