More frequent rest breaks could reduce industrial accidents

Increasing the frequency of short rest-breaks for factory workers who operate machinery could substantially reduce their risk of industrial accidents, suggest authors of a research letter in this week's issue of THE LANCET.

Phillip Tucker from the University of Swansea, UK, and colleagues studied the accident records over three years from a UK car assembly plant. Shift-work at the plant was typical of many industrial settings: two-hour periods of work with short breaks (one 10-minute and one 15-minute break) and a longer 45-minute meal break. Accident risk was doubled for the last half hour of a two-hour period of work compared with the first half-hour, suggesting that more frequent breaks could reduce accident risk.

Phillip Tucker comments: "The rest-break schedule that we investigated was typical of those in many industrial settings. Evidence from industrial settings and laboratory simulations suggests that frequent short breaks (eg, 10 minutes per hour) can improve performance at work. In the future, investigators should examine whether additional short rest breaks could, under some circumstances, counteract increased rates of accident risk during long periods of continuous work."

Contact:Dr Phillip Tucker, Department of Psychology, University of Wales, Swansea SA 2 8PP, UK; T)+44 (0)1792 295894; F) +44 (0)1792 295679; E) p.t.tucker@swansea.ac.uk

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