Kayla Benson

SLCC Bio 1615

Occupational Injuries related to Sleepiness in Indian Traditional Industries

Introduction

Many studies suggest that people in the workforce do not get enough sleep. Not getting

enough sleep affects your performance, short-term memory, reduced attention span, among

other consequences. These lead to work injuries, so resulting in more work absenteeism. These

studies also suggest that people that work rotating shifts experience more fatigue rather than

non shift workers.

Other factors result in workplace injuries such as, not liking your job, psychological disorders,

and unfavorable work conditions. The author reported, “that worker ‘sleeping poorly’ is more

associated with occupational injury than merely ‘sleeping less than 6 hours per day’ (Jaiswal)

Materials and Method

This study took place from May to December of 2008 and the people were chosen from small

enterprises in India. A total of 895 people were selected as subjects. 310 of those workers did

not participate for various reasons, of simply just declining, or their superior did not distribute

them like they were supposed to. Equaling out to be 88.5% of participants responded in one

district. In the other district of Mirzapur only 55% participated. Between the two districts, 920

people responded to the questionnaire. The questionnaire included things like where they live,

what their current job entails, if they have symptoms of depression, alcohol consumption, if
they have had any occupational injuries, and how well they sleep. Other histories such as

hypertension, diabetes, menopausal syndrome, among others were asked.

Through this experiment they tested male and female different, seeing slight differences. After

getting the results back, it showed that 28% of these workers had experienced in some way,

injury in the workplace in the last year. Thirty-nine percent of workers got less than six hours of

sleep at night, about a quarter of them had difficulty waking up in the morning from poor sleep

and 49.6% reported that sleeping in general was difficult. With all of that, the results of

depressive symptoms were at 38.6%.

Results and Discussion

This study was conducted to look at sleepiness in Indian Traditional Industries. Looking also at

if that relates to workplace injuries. It proved their point that these two things are associated to

each other.

These findings told them that also frequent mid-sleep awakenings were more intensely

connected then those of having difficulty falling asleep. Males and people working in the night

have a predicted higher rate of being involved in a fat accident. There is a 30-50% increase of

accidents if people are on night shifts. So, more than 90% of those accidents were related to

fatigue. There were fewer accidents per woman than man, but that can be related to men

participating in more dangerous work than woman, and they had one half the rate than men

did.
Sleepiness was associated with occupational injuries and have a direct impact on their work

capabilities/performance. It affects their performance in these Indian industries. So, Sleepiness

can reduce how alert you are and cause major safety risks.
Bibliography

Jaiswal, Ajeet. "Occupational Injuries related to Sleepiness in Indian Traditional Industries."

Human Biology Review. Pondicherry University, 2012.