The topic of total worker health has become a buzzword within health and safety circles and encompasses workplace fatigue, an increasingly problematic issue leading many companies to create risk management systems.
The first industry to start hours of service was the railroad industry, said LyondellBasell Industrial Hygienist Brad Jones. "Due to a significant number of railroad accidents involving engineers and conductors, the railroad industry decided to implement hours of work limitations,'" he said.
"We're not cavemen anymore. We were designed a certain way: We were designed to sleep at night. You worked by sunlight. Then the sun went down and you went to sleep, got back up the next morning and did it all over," Jones said.
Thus began the emergence of fatigue risk management systems (FRMS) as a global standard for 24/7 operations.
At the turn of the century, service regulations limited work hours per day, week and/or month. Sleep science would later show fatigue was compliant, but unsafe, and inadequately controlled by limiting work-rest hours, according to Jones. From the 1990s through the early 2000s, more comprehensive FRMS emerged and more regulations and standards were adopted and introduced internationally.
While limiting work hours was “a good first step” in controlling fatigue, advances in Circadian sleep studies and research over an approximate 20-year span helped organizations to create more comprehensive approaches to better reduce the risk of fatigue in the workplace," Jones explained to the audience at the recent 2022 EHS Seminar & Tradeshow held in Galveston, Texas.
"We started seeing the early development of comprehensive fatigue-risk management practices or management systems," he said. "Ever since then, we see a continued focus on multinational companies and organizations around the world that are adopting these management systems."
Jones stated that U.S. airlines were one of the first required to submit and implement their FRMS plans to help manage and address fatigue in airline industry. Others that joined in establishing FRMS guidance or regulations include:
- The European Aviation Safety Agency
- American Petroleum Institute (API), which issued ANSI RP-755 recommending all U.S. refineries and petrochemical plants implement a plan
- Federal Rail Safety Act (U.S. railroads)
- U.S. Pipeline Safety Agency
There were two incidents that reportedly triggered an increased focus on FRMS.
In 2009, the Colgan air crash was reportedly the result of pilot performance due to fatigue. Congress passed a law implementing FRMS a year later, in response.
An investigation of the bp Texas City Refinery explosion in 2005, conducted by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, found that fatigue was likely a contributing factor in the explosion. The investigation found that one of the process board operators was identified as likely experiencing "acute sleep loss and cumulative sleep debt," with the operator having worked "12 hour shifts for 29 consecutive days." Fifteen workers died and 180 were injured. As a result of the fatigue-related finding, the report recommended that API develop a fatigue-risk management standard that outlined prevention guidelines, including minimizing or limiting work hours, days and shift work.
"There are consequences of fatigue related to human error," said Jones. Fatigue-related human error affects mental/physical aspects (accidents, injuries, production errors, bad decision-making), can result in mood deterioration (morale, absenteeism, labor issues) and increase impaired health (sick time off, overtime and medical costs).
Jones said that a comprehensive approach to fatigue risk management is essential in minimizing fatigue related risk. Components of a comprehensive management system include consideration of staffing balances, training, education, sleep disorders, policies and procedures, behavior, work/rest hour limitations, work schedule design and the work environment itself.
"All those things kind of work together in an effort to reduce fatigue risk in the workplace. It's not just one individual thing," Jones said.
