Rachael Wilkin

Biology 1615

Article Summary
Occupational Injuries related to Sleepiness in Indian Traditional Industries
Dr. Ajeet Jaiswal

Scientists and researchers have seen a correlation between

occupational injuries and sleepiness. Those workers who havent
received a full nights sleep, for any reason, or more likely than others
to have an accident and be injured at work. There have been
experiments that have been done before on this subject, so some
researchers wanted to do their own experiment to test the results of
other experiments.
For this research they decided to test this correlation. They made
a questionnaire that they distributed to workers in two different
districts, Varanasi and Mirzapur district, in India. The Varanasi district
manufactures plants, and the mirzapur district is a carpet industrial
area. They gave 920 workers this questionnaire asking questions about
their sleep habits, their history of occupational injury, and depressive
symptoms. They also collected information about each worker such as
age, education, alcohol and smoking history, other diseases, etc. They
asked both males and females of all backgrounds and all ages, ranging
from 18-60+

Rachael Wilkin
Biology 1615

Their questionnaire asked questions such as how hard it was for

them to wake up in the morning, how many hours of sleep they
received. They asked whether they had difficulty breathing, and any
insomnia symptoms. They didnt use any partially completed
questionnaires in their final results. They used only those that were
completely filled out and relevant to the experiment. Their experiment
was more inclusive than some that have previously been done before.
The other researchers did not ask questions about difficulty breathing
while sleeping, or difficulty waking in the morning. More research can
be done about these topics
The results were conclusive with their hypothesis. They found
that those who had poor sleep habits and depressive symptoms were
much more likely to have experienced an occupational injury in the last
year. They found that some workers had problems sleeping a through
the night, others had insomnia symptoms, and others still had
problems breathing while sleeping. These results were very similar to
other results that have been published from other researchers who
have done similar types of experiments and questionnaires.
There also seemed to be a pretty high percentage of
occupational injuries among those who had poor sleep patterns and
had depressive symptoms. Those who werent receiving a full nights
rest were more likely to be injured on the job. Although sleep duration
2

Rachael Wilkin
Biology 1615

is in most cases closely related to sufficiency of sleep, our data

suggested that efficiency of sleep may be as or more important than
mere sleep duration. (Jaiswal, A. 2012) While those who had difficulty
waking up in the morning, and those who had difficulty breathing while
sleeping were less likely to have an accident while at work, in relation
to the other group who were at a higher risk.
They also found that the females were more likely to say they
were experiencing sleep problems, but were less likely than the men to
have an occupation injury. They suggested two possible explanations
for this First, females may be less likely to engage in dangerous work
than males in this population. Secondly, females had one-half of injury
rates compared to males. (Jaiswal, A. 2012)
In conclusion they found that those who reported difficulty
staying asleep, insomnia symptoms, poor sleep patterns, and not
enough sleep at night were all directly related to their chance of, and
frequency of occupational injury. Effecting the workers health and wellbeing, their productivity, and the companys overall safety and
production levels long term. More research may be done to find out the
correlation between those other topics that havent been studied as
much, but their research is similar to that which has previously been
performed.

Rachael Wilkin
Biology 1615

Works Cited

Jaiswal, A. (2012, July 18). Occupational Injuries related to

Sleepiness in Indian Traditional Industries. 248-267