Long working hours 'health risk'

Working long hours can greatly increase the risk of suffering injury or illness, a study says.

Workers who do overtime were 61% more likely to become hurt or ill, once factors such as age and gender were taken into account.

And working more than 12 hours a day raised the risk by more than a third, the University of Massachusetts found.

Report co-author Allard Dembe said risk was not necessarily associated with how hazardous the job was.

"The results of this study suggest that jobs with long working hours are not more risky merely because they are concentrated in inherently hazardous industries or occupations."

And he said the findings, published in the Occupational and Environmental Health journal, supported initiative such as the 48-hour European Working Time Directive to cut the number of working hours.

From the records, researchers found 5,139 work-related injuries and illnesses, ranging from stress to cuts, burns and muscle injuries.

More than half of these injuries and illnesses occurred in jobs with extended working hours or overtime.

The researchers concluded that the more hours worked, the greater the risk of injury.

But they did not find that lengthy commutes to and from work had any impact on illness and injury.

In the UK 14% of the working population - 3.6m - work more than 48 hours a week. 

　

最近一项研究结果显示：长时间工作会大大增加受伤和生病的危险。

如果把年龄和性别等因素都考虑进去的话，加班加点工作的员工受伤或生病的可能性会增加61%。

马萨诸塞州大学研究发现，如果一天工作超过12个小时的话，出现危险情况的可能性会提高三分之一。

该研究报告的作者之一阿拉德·登贝说发生危险和工作本身的危险程度并没有必然的联系。

“这项研究的结果显示，长时间的工作之所以风险更大并不仅仅因为这类工作所在的行业或职业本身有危险。”

研究结果在《职业和环境卫生》周刊上发表。他说研究结果为《欧洲工作时间法》提供了依据。该法令规定了每周48小时工作制，旨在削减工作时间。

在报告中，研究者们发现了5139种和工作有关的伤害和疾病，从紧张到割伤、烧伤、肌肉拉伤，各种情况都有。

半数以上的伤害和疾病都是由于加班加点、长时间工作引起的。

研究者们得出的结论是：工作的时间越长，受到伤害的危险越大。

但是，他们并没有发现上下班长时间乘车对伤害和疾病有任何影响。

在英国，14％的就业人口，也就是大约360万人口，每周的工作时间超过48小时。

Vocabulary:

overtime : beyond the regular time（加班地）

inherently: in an inherent manner（天性地，固有地）