Today’s TUC Email Newsletter on health & safety “Risks” has a very interesting article on recent research that appears to directly link work related stress with heart disease. “Stressed workers suffer a greatly increased risk of heart disease, a study of UK civil servants has found. Stressful jobs have a direct biological impact on the body, the research indicated. The study reported online by the European Heart Journal focused on more than 10,000 British civil servants, part of the ongoing Whitehall II study. Those under 50 who said their work was stressful were 68 per cent more likely to develop heart disease than the stress-free”.
A 68% increase is significant. In my previous job I tried unsuccessfully to ask the employer to record and report incidents of heart disease and strokes to the safety committee, so we could try and identify if certain jobs were in fact prone to stress related illness. That request got no where fast.
Should I in the future ask trade union members who have suffered heart disease and who work in stress full jobs to fill in an accident/incident report?
