RESEARCH ARTICLE
Shift Work and Extended Working Hours as Risk Factors for Occupational Injury
Simo Salminen*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 3
First Page: 14
Last Page: 18
Publisher Id: TOERGJ-3-14
DOI: 10.2174/1875934301003010014
Article History:
Received Date: 27/03/2009Revision Received Date: 10/12/2009
Acceptance Date: 07/01/2010
Electronic publication date: 18/2/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The aim of this review is to examine the effect of shift work and extended working hours on occupational injuries. A calculation based on four studies shows that the risk of occupational injury during afternoon shifts was 6% lower than that during morning shifts. The same kind of calculation showed that the risk of occupational injury during night shifts was 15% lower than during morning shifts. A review of eight studies showed that the risk of occupational injury was 41% higher for 10-hour working days compared to 8-hour working days. On the other hand, working 12-hour days increased the risk of occupational injury by 14%. When working more than 12 hours per day, three studies showed a 98% increase in involvement in occupational injury. The results of this study showed that shift work considerably increased the risk of occupational injury in the USA, but not in the other countries. Extended working hours was related to elevated risk of occupational injury. Thus shift work and long work hours did not suit for all employees.