Both technology and night-shift work are known to cause fatigue hazards on their own. But together, they can be the perfect storm for life-threatening shut-eye.
Fatigue is particularly prevalent among night-shift workers. As of 2004, there were almost 15 million people in the U.S. who worked full-time in evening-, night- and rotating-shift jobs, DOL says. According to National Institutes of Health, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic sleep disorders.
In a 2016 NIOSH survey of more than 6,000 people, 37.6% of the respondents reported short sleep duration which, according to NIOSH, represents 54.1 million U.S. workers. Short sleep duration was found to be less prevalent among daytime workers (35.9%) than among night-shift workers (61.8%), the survey says. Approximately 21.45% of night-shift (any hours between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.) and evening-shift (any hours between 7 p.m. and 8 a.m.) workers had difficulty falling asleep, whereas 12.7% of daytime workers reported this issue.
A myriad of factors cause fatigue. This is why Susan Murphy, principal consultant at DEKRA Insight, recommends a vigorous and robust fatigue risk management system.
Professional Safety: How do workplaces address worker fatigue?
Susan Murphy: To many organizational leaders’ surprise, two of the most common causes of workplace fatigue are from insufficient staffing and overtime due to open shifts from employees on extended absences.
What we see related to the overtime issue is that when workers retire, organizations do not hire a replacement with a sufficient lead time, so the organization ends up with open gaps in its roster. Leaders tend to not recognize this as a type of overtime or a significant source of fatigue for their workers. With a vigorous fatigue risk management system (FRMS), organizations analyze the job position ahead of time and then plan for a retirement schedule. This avoids creating staffing gaps and unnecessary overtime.
Staffing is not just about a headcount on the books. An organization must determine whether positions are filled to evaluate if staffing is sufficient. Additionally, an organization’s leaders must consider the average number of medical leaves the organization experiences. Otherwise, the organization may find itself having an older workforce and carrying a lean headcount, which is an extremely worrisome combination.
These two causes of workplace fatigue are why a comprehensive FRMS includes an analysis of the staff’s workload and continually monitors open shift reports.
PS: Why do electronics that emit blue wavelengths impact people’s sleep more than other light sources?
Murphy: Research has found that exposure to blue light suppresses the production of the sleep hormone melatonin, which induces natural sleep onset, more than any other type of light. Other studies have found that blue wavelengths suppress Delta brainwaves (the level of deep sleep when the brain recharges itself) while simultaneously boosting the brain’s alpha wavelengths (which create alertness in the brain).
A University of Toronto study found that among nurses who worked night shifts, those who wore glasses that blocked blue light wavelengths produced more melatonin than the nurses who received standard indoor light during night shifts.
PS: Some industries, such as healthcare, require night-shift workers to regularly use electronics that emit blue light. What changes can management make in these environments to diminish fatigue-causing hazards?
Murphy: Most 24-hour operations (including industrial workplaces and medical institutions) have fluorescent lighting with cool white tubes that concentrate the blue/yellow spectrums of light, resulting in more exposure per lumen to blue light. My colleague, Susan Koen, says the best way for an organization to reduce the concentrated blue light exposure for night-shift workers is to install full-spectrum lighting that balances blue light within the full wavelength range. Full-spectrum lighting has the added benefit of generating the approximate wavelength of mid-morning sunlight, which activates brain alertness to daytime levels even though it is nighttime outside.
PS: Between an emergence of wearable biosensor technology research and a stagnant wearables market looking to shift product development toward a consumer market more likely to utilize wearables as investments rather than fads, is a wave of fatigue wearables coming? One such product is SmartCap, which is an attachable band for a worker’s hard hat or baseball cap that measures the user’s brain activity for alertness. Are these effective and are there any potential negative implications of using such devices?
Murphy: My colleague, Susan Koen, is aware of the SmartCap technology and several studies currently underway with this fatigue monitoring technology. Here’s her take:
It has not been studied in the field long enough to determine its efficacy. However, we know from initial reviews of this type of EEG-based monitoring that there can be external and internal influences (e.g., time of day and heat levels, medications, drugs, alcohol) on EEG readings in an operational environment. Moreover, a potential downside is that the recording of fatigue-detecting patterns, such as delta waves, may come too late to prevent a fatigue-driven incident. There needs to be more time spent in field studies with sound pre/post-calibration of the SmartCap before any conclusions can be drawn.
According to Koen, this system should be “strategically-aligned, culturally-driven, scientifically-sound, data-informed, risk-focused, performance-based and, most importantly, integrated into the operational fabric of an organization.”
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NIOSH offers a free online training program to educate professionals on the safety and health risks connected with shift work and long work hours and strategies to reduce these risks. The course offers a continuing education certificate or a certificate of competition through CDC.
Click here to take the course from a desktop browser or click here to take it from a mobile device.
For additional resources on fatigue and night-shift workers, go to NIOSH’s topic page for shift work and long work hours.
To read the complete interview with Murphy, go to the American Society of Safety Engineers’ website.
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