#Product Trends
The Challenges of Sleeping at Sea
Sleeping across the 5 Oceans
If you work at sea or not, you will know how important a good nights sleep is. We came across this fantastic piece by Rob Edwards, he talks in great details how workers in the maritime industry struggle with sleep and getting a good nights sleep on-board.
Accident risk
The type of accommodation the workers have, and the amount of sleep they get, are crucial. Although most workers in the Norwegian sector now have their own cabins, many UK workers still have to share with one or even more colleagues. That can mean cramped conditions, lack of storage space and sleep often disturbed by people snoring or moving about.
Malloy recounted a series of horror stories about toilets overflowing and cabins being flooded by sewage. It’s worse than being in jail, he joked. “You cannot over-estimate the stress the men are under. Lack of sleep, alarms going, doors banging - they really can’t manage all of this. They need privacy and comfort.”
The trade unions are backed by Colin MacFarlane, an emeritus professor at Strathclyde University’s marine engineering department in Glasgow. “Fatigue, sleep deficit and changes of shift are all substantially correlated with workplace accidents,” he said. “And chronic fatigue and sleep deficit are correlated with longer term health problems.”
He quoted research suggesting that shift workers had a 40% increased risk of heart disease. There was evidence that long working hours caused more physical aches and pains, as well as greater mental stress. There were some indications that the longer shore breaks common in Norway could have resulted in fewer injuries than in the UK, though comparisons were difficult.
Some particularly telling studies showed that staying awake for long periods can impair the ability of people to perform tasks as if they were drunk. A single period of 17 hours wakefulness is like having a blood alcohol content of 0.05%, with 19 hours awake equivalent to 0.1%. The legal limit for driving a car in the UK is 0.08%. “Offshore installations are being operated by personnel whose decision making capabilities make them very unsafe for driving,” said MacFarlane.
Fatigue makes workers more likely to make errors and miss out important tasks. “In that way the barriers to stop larger accidents are degraded,” he argued. “On top of that, fatigue will make the reactions to emergency events more prone to mistakes. I think that we've seen that often when situations offshore move away from the normal, or commercial stress builds.”
MacFarlane pointed out, though, that the evidence showed that most of the dangers from fatigue were concentrated in night shifts worked for 12 hours for either seven or 14 days. A Norwegian study in 2007 found 30% more serious injuries occurred during night shifts compared to day shifts, particularly among maintenance and construction workers.
How Could We Help?
Solarglide are attempting to play their part in helping workers to get a better nights sleep at sea with SG Lunaglider blackout blinds. SG Lunaglider can signifincantly Darken the room, thus increasing crew comfort and moral. Crew members who are working nightshift can ensure their cabins are correctly Darkened, An essential part to a good nights sleep
Find out more about how Solarglide can improve your maritime expirience at www.solarglide.com
source: ‘Offshore working time in relation to performance, health and safety: a review of current practice and evidence’ by the University of Oxford for the Health and Safety Executive (Parkes, 2010).
