TRB's Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 9: Literature Review on Health and Fatigue Issues Associated with Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Hours of Work examines literature relevant to health and fatigue issues associated with commercial vehicle driver hours of service. This literature review was specifically requested by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to provide information related to its Hours of Service regulations issued in January 2004. The report contains a general literature review of the health issues from 1975 to the present, and fatigue issues from January 2004 to present, associated with commercial vehicle driver hours of service. The report also contains a literature review of references that were cited in response to a related FMCSA January 2005 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Strictly a literature review, the report does not contain any conclusions or recommendations.

With a large proportion of emergency admissions due to occupational health problems, the effect this can have on your practice cannot be ignored. Owing to the shortage of occupational physicians and limited worker access to health care, the diagnosis and treatment of occupational diseases rely increasingly on the emergency physician. Apart from extra paperwork, owing to the extra legal and administrative regulations, a lack of knowledge of occupational medicine can risk a missed diagnosis. This burden of work means occupational disorders impact the whole of the emergency department. Michael Greenberg addresses your questions and concerns about the management of these patients: from triage to discharge, and beyond for all work-place injuries or disorders, whether office-based, agricultural or industrial and their employment regulations Occupational Emergency Medicine is an essential reference for emergency physicians and trainees, featuring comprehensive information on legal issues involving the physician, and advice on managing occupational health admissions.

Workers in the United States are losing sleep. In the global economy a growing number of employees hold jobs—often more than one at once—with unpredictable hours. Even before the rise of the twenty-four-hour workplace, the relationship between sleep and industry was problematic: sleep is frequently cast as an enemy or a weakness, while constant productivity and flexibility are glorified at the expense of health and safety. Dangerously Sleepy is the first book to track the longtime association of overwork and sleep deprivation from the nineteenth century to the present. Health and labor historian Alan Derickson charts the cultural and political forces behind the overvaluation—and masculinization—of wakefulness in the United States. Since the nineteenth century, men at all levels of society have toiled around the clock by necessity: steel workers coped with rotating shifts, Pullman porters grappled with ever-changing timetables and unrelenting on-call status, and long-haul truckers dealt with chaotic life on the road. But the dangerous realities of exhaustion were minimized and even glamorized when the entrepreneurial drive of public figures such as Thomas Edison and Donald Trump encouraged American men to deny biological need in the name of success. For workers, resisting sleep became a challenge of masculine strength. This lucid history of the wakeful work ethic suggests that for millions of American men and women, untenable work schedules have been the main factor leading to sleep loss, newer ailments such as shift work sleep disorder, and related morbidity and mortality. Dangerously Sleepy places these public health problems in historical context.

TRB’s Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program (CTBSSP) Synthesis 19: Effects of Psychoactive Chemicals on Commercial Driver Health and Performance: Stimulants, Hypnotics, Nutritional, and Other Supplements identifies available information and research gaps relating to the use of chemical substances by commercial drivers and is intended to provide up-to-date information to inform decision makers about the near-, mid-, and long-range planning needs for research and educational outreach programs.

There are approximately 4,000 fatalities in crashes involving trucks and buses in the United States each year. Though estimates are wide-ranging, possibly 10 to 20 percent of these crashes might have involved fatigued drivers. The stresses associated with their particular jobs (irregular schedules, etc.) and the lifestyle that many truck and bus drivers lead, puts them at substantial risk for insufficient sleep and for developing short- and long-term health problems. Commercial Motor Vehicle Driver Fatigue, Long-Term Health and Highway Safety assesses the state of knowledge about the relationship of such factors as hours of driving, hours on duty, and periods of rest to the fatigue experienced by truck and bus drivers while driving and the implications for the safe operation of their vehicles. This report evaluates the relationship of these factors to drivers' health over the longer term, and identifies improvements in data and research methods that can lead to better understanding in both areas.