Off-the-Job Drinkers Have More Workplace Injuries

New research shows that people who drink heavily off the job are more
likely to suffer workplace injuries, HealthScout News reported Sept. 16.

The study analyzed data on drivers working for the San Francisco Municipal
Railway. Researchers looked at information about alcohol consumption,
medical histories, and workers-compensation claims over a five-year
period.

"In general, the job of urban-transit operator is one of the most
stressful jobs in the United States," said David R. Ragland, a research
professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and
lead author of the study. "We found in a previous study that some bus
drivers use after-hours alcohol to cope with work-related stress. In this
study, our findings imply that off-the-job drinking can have costly
impacts for the worker and the transit agency."

The research found that the more transit operators drank off the job, the
more likely they were to have a workers-compensation claim.

"These findings have implications for prevention, including not only
changing at-work factors that affect off-work drinking, but also
strategies for decreasing off-work drinking," said Ragland.

The study is published in the September 2002 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical
& Experimental Research.