Department of Neuroscience, Functional Pharmacology, Uppsala University, 751 24 Uppsala, Sweden.
Unit of Medical Epidemiology, Department of Surgical Sciences, Uppsala University, 751 85 Uppsala, Sweden.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Oct 15;17(20):7495. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17207495.
Improving health and safety at work has been an important issue for the European Union since the 1980s. The existing literature supports that shift work is associated with multiple indicators of poor health but frequently neglects the potential impact of occupational hazards. This study aims at describing and comparing the exposure to different workplace hazards among shift and other workers before and after 1980. Exposure to different workplace hazards (noise, dust, pollutant, and other physical stressors) were analyzed among 119,413 participants from the UK Biobank cohort. After stratifying the analyses before and after 1980, exposure was compared between shift and other workers. Potential confounding variables (sex, age, ethnicity, education level, occupational category, and neuroticism) were adjusted for in the log-binomial regression. Shift workers had a higher prevalence ratio (PR) than other workers of being exposed to almost all identified hazards both before or after 1980. They were also more likely to be exposed to multiple hazards compared to other workers, both before 1980 (PR: 1.25; 95% CI: 1.21-1.30) and after 1980 (PR: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.30-1.38). The prevalence of all measured risk factors was higher after 1980 than before 1980 among shift workers. Of note, the work environment has improved overall for other workers. Our findings suggest that changes at the workplace have benefited other workers more than shift workers as they are still more exposed to all occupational hazards.
改善工作场所的健康和安全一直是欧盟自 20 世纪 80 年代以来的一个重要问题。现有文献支持轮班工作与多种健康不良指标有关，但经常忽略职业危害的潜在影响。本研究旨在描述和比较 1980 年前和 1980 年后轮班和其他工人在不同工作场所面临的危害。在英国生物库队列中，对 119413 名参与者进行了不同工作场所危害（噪声、粉尘、污染物和其他物理应激源）的暴露分析。在分层分析 1980 年前和 1980 年后，比较了轮班和其他工人之间的暴露情况。在对数二项式回归中调整了潜在混杂变量（性别、年龄、种族、教育水平、职业类别和神经质）。轮班工人比其他工人更有可能接触到几乎所有在 1980 年前或 1980 年后确定的危害，而且他们也比其他工人更有可能接触到多种危害，1980 年前（PR：1.25；95%CI：1.21-1.30）和 1980 年后（PR：1.34；95%CI：1.30-1.38）。在轮班工人中，1980 年后所有测量的风险因素的患病率均高于 1980 年前。值得注意的是，与轮班工人相比，其他工人的工作环境总体上有所改善。我们的研究结果表明，随着时间的推移，工作场所的变化使其他工人受益更多，而轮班工人仍面临更多的职业危害。
