Negative Impact of Circadian Rhythm and Night Shift on Employee Health

This report discusses the negative impact of circadian rhythm and night shift on employee health. It explains the different types of circadian rhythm disorders and their symptoms. The report recommends various ways for industries to overcome the problems arising due to different shifts of work done by employees.

ERGONOMIC MODULE
2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Circadian rhythm can be defined as natural process of human body that helps in
regulating the wake and sleep cycle as well as repeat that cycle roughly 24 hours. In simple
words it includes the physical, behaviour change and mental health of an individual towards the
environment. Wherease, night shift can be state as arrangement of the work hour that employee
has to follow while working in the organization (Lim and et.al., 2018). The present report will
discuss on the cardigan rhythm and night shift as well as their negative impact on the employee.
MAIN BODY
Circadian rhythm can be defined as natural process of the human body that helps individual
in responding towards the external changes in the environment. Such as living things,
behavioural and climate change. In term of biology the chronobiology is the study of circadian
rhythm. For instance, sleeping in the night and waking up in the morning. It generally depends
on biological timing that is composed of particular molecules likewise protein that interact with
the cell through the body (Serin and Tek., 2019). It plays an important role in maintaining the
health of any living organism such as animals and human being. Generally, it generates the board
pattern of the activity and rest.
The classic example of Bhopal gas was operated within 24 hours due to excessive work the
employees of the company got tired and fall asleep because of that the tragic incident took place.
Moreover, it has harmed the environment as well as many people have lost their life and beloved
one in the accident (Walker and et.al., 2020). The circadian rhythms work in structural format it
depends on the master clock of the body. Furthermore, it defines the sleep cycle of human for
example the body is wired to sleep in the dark and when the day arise brain release melatonin
hormone in order to wake up the body.
Furthermore, there are 3 types of circadian rhythm that are related to delayed phase
disorder. For example, an individual sleeping between 2 or 3 am and they are productive at night
compare to day. This type of disorder is most common in teenagers and adults. The other type is
advance sleep phase in that an individual sleep between 6 to9 pm and are more productive in day
time (Black and et.al.,2019). Therefore, this situation is very common in the middle age and
insomniac people. Whereas the second type is jet leg that can be defined as a phase where the
internal clock of an individual is disturbed due to long air travelling or different time zone. The

common symptoms are change in the appetite, gastrointestinal problems and discomfort and
mood swings. The third type is shift work disorder that is a phase where the sleep is disturbed
due to rotation in the shift of the work. It mainly disturbed the body circadian rhythm of the
individual as body is not able to complete the basic cycle and have to adjust in dynamic work
nature (Get in Touch with Circadian Rhythm., 2021). In addition to this, the common symptom are
ongoing fatigue and gas related problems along with this it can cause a many health issues such
as high blood pressure and endometrial cancer.
Moreover, the night shift can be descried as the process of dividing the time according to
the work of the employees. The positive effect an industrial company has due to night shift is
that it can easily distribute large work. Also, due to division of work there is no chaos in the
organization and the firm is easily able to achieve the target in the limited frame of time.
However, the employees face the negative effect of night shift such as excessive work can lead
to more stress and mental and physical problems that lower their efficiency while working. The
industrial company has to invest more in maintaining the health of their subordinates that affect
the overall operational cost of the company (Khosravipour, Shahmohammadi and Athar., 2019).
For example : Tragic Comair flight incident reported in New York Time on 31 August
killed 49 people due to lack of proper sleep. Hence, due to sleep disorder, the single controller in
tower was performing both radar and functional duties of the tower that resulted in this tragic
incident.
Moreover, this causes difficulties in maintaining both family and social life that causes
negative influences on personal relationships, children and society in general. Also, Circadian
rhythms disorders involves hard time in falling asleep such as waking up several times during the
sleep cycle and not being able to go back to sleep etc. As such this reduces the productivity as
well as creativity and also causes the problem of fatigue with poor performance(Voigt, Forsyth
and Keshavarzian, 2019). Also, Fatigue has been a major cause of accidents in almost all sectors
of industry. It is a feeling that is caused due to lack of energy and tiredness where the individual
is left with no motivation to work. Some accidents have also occurred in-spite of issues were
raised about safety because of timing schedules. For example The mile island incident where
the radioactive gases were released after couple of days of incident because operator failed to
recognize loss of coolant that caused large number of deaths. Another example is Exxon Valdez
oil spill that was result of man-made disaster in which there was the worst oil spill that spread

to approx 1300 miles (2,092,147.2 m) and killed hundreds and thousands of seabirds, seabirds,
whales etc. The reason behind this was found excessive workload and radar was found
inoperable at the time they left the port.
Circadian rhythms also create negative impact in the long run as it causes disturbances in
sleeping and eating habits and in more severe cases create problems of gastrointestinal, neuron-
psychic and cardiovascular
(hypertension, ischemic heart diseases) functions. This can been seen in FV brothers incident
where they were grounded after long hours and thus two lives were lost and report also
considers the use of alcohol by the crewmembers. Moreover, alcohol was used to avoid the sleep
but rather workers become more distracted and were adverse in making the flexible decision that
caused this accident.
Hence, it can be said that disruption makes the people to adopt more rigid thinking
pattern that results in lower performance. Therefore, the innovative thinking is limited, and they
are unable to cope up with pressure (Kiessling, 2020). A perfect example of this was also seen in
Chernobyl disaster that was the worst nuclear disaster in terms of both cost and causalities.
Moreover, it wasc due to result of fatigue among the workers and human error communication
that resulted in two or more explosions in the reactor building.
Industrial accidents are major related to Circadian rhythms due to late hours shift
working and caused severe US highway accidents, air traffic controlling incidents, great heck
incident etc (Blume, Garbazza, and Spitschan, 2019). For this purpose various fatigue testing
such as cognitive testing, multi sleep latency test is also used to lessen the impacts of any future
causalities. But these tests are also sometime ineffective as laboratory tests are hard to duplicate
the actual work conditions.
From the overall reports the best ways that can be recommended to overcome such
problems is that industries must take opportunities to identify the hidden costs related to
inefficient schedules, procedures and policies. Also, various driver alertness management
programmes must be conducted to reduce fatigue in the transportation. Moreover, proper
training programs must be conducted to educate the employees how to live a balanced and
quality life through ensuring proper health and safety measures(Zheng and et.al., 2019).
Managers should also schedule shifts so that they are able to allow sufficient break and days off

in the situation when workers are reassigned to different shifts. This will help them to get enough
sleep and will give them enough time to attend to the personal lives.
Moreover, overtime should not be promoted among the shift workers and friendly space
should be offered to improve the alertness, safety, productivity and judgement(Chellappa, 2021).
Also, permanent night shifts should be minimized and short intervals as well as some weekends
should be made completely free to refresh the moods of the workers. It is to be suggested to the
industrial company that it should use advance technology so that employees can easily work with
low stress. Along, with this industrial organization can make a schedule for a break time so that
worker sleep cycle is not disturbed
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that Circadian rhythm cycle is a biological
process that helps individual in identifying their sleep phase. The present report has summarized
about night shift that include any shift that falls between the hours of 11 pm to 3am.
Furthermore, the study has also depicted on the negative effect of the night shift on the
employees mental and physical health. Lastly, the report has also recommended industries
various ways to overcome the problems arises due to different shift of work done by the
employees.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Black, N. and et.al.,2019. Circadian rhythm of cardiac electrophysiology, arrhythmogenesis, and
the underlying mechanisms. Heart Rhythm. 16(2). pp.298-307.
Blume, C., Garbazza, C. and Spitschan, M., 2019. Effects of light on human circadian rhythms,
sleep and mood. Somnologie. 23(3). pp.147-156.
Chellappa, S. L., 2021. Individual differences in light sensitivity affect sleep and circadian
rhythms. Sleep. 44(2). p.zsaa214.
Foster, R. G., 2020. Sleep, circadian rhythms and health. Interface Focus. 10(3). p.20190098.
Khosravipour, M., Shahmohammadi, M. and Athar, H. V., 2019. The effects of rotating and
extended night shift work on the prevalence of metabolic syndrome and its
components. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews.13(6).pp.3085-
3089.
Kiessling, S., 2020. Circadian Rhythms in Health and Disease. In Beyond Our Genes (pp. 17-
35). Springer, Cham.
Lim, Y. and et.al., 2018. Association between night-shift work, sleep quality and metabolic
syndrome. Occupational and environmental medicine. 75(10). pp.716-723.
Serin, Y. and Tek, N. A., 2019. Effect of circadian rhythm on metabolic processes and the
regulation of energy balance. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. 74(4). pp.322-330.
Voigt, R. M., Forsyth, C. B. and Keshavarzian, A., 2019. Circadian rhythms: a regulator of
gastrointestinal health and dysfunction. Expert review of gastroenterology & hepatology.13(5).
pp.411-424.
Walker, W. H. and et.al., 2020. Circadian rhythm disruption and mental health. Translational
Psychiatry.10(1). pp.1-13.
Zheng, G. and et.al., 2019. The effects of indoor high temperature on circadian rhythms of
human work efficiency. International journal of environmental research and public health.16(5).
p.759.
Online
Get in Touch with Circadian Rhythm., 2021. [Online]. Available through <
https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/find-circadian-rhythm >.
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