FACTS
- There are three causes of fatigue: sleep loss, disruption of a person’s body clock, and prolonged mental or physical activity.
- Fatigue can reduce a worker’s alertness, leading to errors and an increased possibility of injury under these two conditions: either when operating equipment or vehicles, or when performing important tasks requiring considerable concentration.
- Seven long-term health effects of fatigue include increased risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, anxiety, depression, and reduced fertility.
- A University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study found that fatigued workers had nearly twice the risk for injury compared to non-fatigued workers.
- Five symptoms indicating that a worker is experiencing fatigue include excessive yawning or falling asleep at work; impaired decision-making ability; short-term memory impairment and reduced concentration; slowed reflexes and reduced hand-eye coordination; and a noticeable decrease in one’s ability to communicate clearly.
- One major cause of fatigue is a work schedule that limits the amount of rest time a worker has before starting the next shift, because of issues such as overtime on the previous shift.
STATS
- According to the National Safety Council, more than 43 % of workers are sleep-deprived. Predictably, the problem is even worse for workers who do shift work or take the night shifts – 62 % of them complain about sleep loss.
- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every year about 100,000 police-reported, drowsy-driving crashes result in nearly 800 fatalities and about 50,000 injuries.
- workers with sleep problems have a 1.62 times higher risk of injury than workers without sleep problems. The study also estimates that about 13% of work injuries can be attributed to sleep problems.
- Injury rates peak among workers who regularly get less than five hours of sleep a night (7.89 injuries per 100 employees) and among workers who typically work more than 60 hours a week (4.34 injuries per 100 employees).
- Research shows 13% of workplace injuries can be attributed to fatigue, a dangerous by-product of a society that operates 24 hours a day.
- More than 37% of employees are sleep-deprived. Those most at risk work the night shift, long shifts, rotating shifts or irregular shifts.
- More than 69% of workers feel fatigued at work. According to a 2018 survey report by the National Safety Council (NSC), two-thirds of the US labor force experiences workplace fatigue. This means that almost 107 million out of the 160 million US workers are affected by occupational fatigue.