ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a sample of studies emphasizing injury and illness outcomes associated with working more than the standard 35 to 40-hour week practiced by the majority of US workers. Standardized psycho-physiological and cognitive measures presumed to reflect fatigue, for example, deteriorated through the 9th to the 12th hours of long shifts and the effects appeared to be more acute when long shifts were combined with more than 40 hours per week. Characteristics of those working more than 40 hours per week were examined by researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in a "quality of work life" module that was added to the General Social Survey in 2002. The chapter concludes that fatigue, both from hours of work and from sleep loss, was a major contributing factor to injury risk in the data. Reports of fatigue in the working population are fairly frequent irrespective of work hours.
