Fatigue: Sleeping Giant of the Workplace
How can undiagnosed sleep apnea affect the workplace?
Fatigue is a plague for a number of industries, including manufacturing, construction, energy and transportation. The effect of fatigue on the brain is reported to be as harmful as drunk driving, with shared symptoms such as loss of situational awareness, underestimation of risk, hindered visual perception and reduced reaction times.
Many infamous workplace accidents are directly and indirectly caused by employee fatigue—one of the worst being the 1986 catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, which was specifically attributed to human error. Operators were found to have worked a 13-hour shift attempting to function on too little sleep. In the 2001 Canadian National train disaster, two of the freight train crew members had been recently diagnosed with sleep apnea and suffered from chronic sleeplessness. The resulting fatigue caused the collision with another train, two fatalities and the spillage of 3,000 gallons of diesel.
Fatigue is more widespread than reported, with the strong majority of Americans completely unaware of the dangers of chronic fatigue due to lack of sleep. Significantly, a major driver of underreported fatigue is the oft-undiagnosed chronic condition that is sleep apnea.
To address fatigue and minimize the associated risks, a long-term partnership is required between workers and companies.
The Major Underlying Cause of Fatigue
Americans are living longer, but research shows that the time spent living in good health—or a person’s “health span”—is not increasing in parallel.
For employers, that means the workforce is living longer, but chronic medical conditions are incapacitating workplace function more than ever. In fact, lifestyle-related diseases are expected to increase from 58 percent of deaths in 2000 to 76 percent of deaths by 2030.
One of the reasons chronic diseases will continue to cause health decline at this pace is the aforementioned pervasive underlying cause of which most people are unaware: sleep apnea.
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