Heart Disease and Work: Job-Related Risks and How to Reduce Them

Heart disease covers conditions of the heart and blood vessels, and a person's job can be one of its causes. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) points to the social, organizational and environmental conditions people meet at work as factors that can raise their risk.

How much work matters

Among people of working age, work is linked to about 10%–20% of all deaths from cardiovascular disease. In the United States, according to NIOSH, 10 work-related factors cause 5%–8% of health care costs and 120,000 deaths each year, heart disease among them:

• long working hours (55 or more a week);
• night work, rotating shifts or other non-standard shifts;
• high job demands;
• little control over one's work;
• low job security, meaning worry about losing the job;
• imbalance between work and family;
• low organizational justice, the sense of being treated unfairly at work;
• little social support at work;
• unemployment; and
• having no health insurance.

Other job factors linked to heart disease

There is evidence that heart disease risk also rises with:

• jobs that demand high effort for low reward;
• bullying or violence;
• lower income;
• more physical activity on the job; and
• exposure to dust, fumes or chemicals, such as secondhand smoke and lead.

A job can also shape the familiar personal risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood glucose and high cholesterol; obesity, lack of exercise and poor diet; burnout and depression; heavy drinking; and sleep problems.

Occupations at higher risk

NIOSH lists these groups as having a higher risk of heart disease:

• professional drivers, including long-haul truck drivers;
• first responders, including police officers and firefighters;
• food and drink preparation workers;
• fishery workers;
• cargo workers;
• civil engineering workers; and
• plant and machine operators and assemblers.

What workplaces can do

Programs and activities. Build short physical activity breaks of 5 to 10 minutes into the workday. Offer workplace health programs that counsel employees on healthier habits. Train employees properly to prevent chemical exposures. Ban smoking at work, and stock vending machines and cafeterias with healthy food.

Surveillance. Hold health screenings with referrals. Provide portable blood pressure monitors so employees' readings can be measured more accurately while they work. Survey the workforce about how work is organized and the stresses it creates, whether daily and ongoing or tied to major life events.

Lower stress at its source. Organizational changes, collective bargaining and legislation can all reduce work stress and fatigue. NIOSH's examples include reducing mandatory overtime, providing family sick leave, increasing staff in health care settings (for instance, better nurse-to-patient ratios), forming committees, such as labor-management committees, to find and reduce job stressors, and giving workers more say over their working time, tasks and how work is organized.

NIOSH's Total Worker Health program works on combining protection from workplace hazards with the prevention of injury and illness, and its Worker Health Charts let users examine heart disease risk factors.

Sources

• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, CDC, "Heart Disease and Work": https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/heartdisease/about/index.html
• The source page's photographs are stock images and are not reproduced here.