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Night shift and Breast cancer

The Danish government has begun paying compensation to women who have developed breast cancer after long spells of working nights.  This follows the ruling by the UN agency, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which ranks night working just one level below working with known carcinogens such as asbestos.

This is a nasty shock for the women who have selflessly sacrificed their night’s sleep to work in this way and must be very frightening.  Apparently disrupted sleep patterns interfere with the production of melatonin, which helps suppress cancer.

So often we seem to find that when we interfere with our natural patterns, drives and rhythms there is a price to pay.  It is important that wherever possible, that business systems honour and utilise these more natural forces rather than trampling over them.  I think that the 21st century workplace needs to get much cleverer about creating more harmony and more sensitivity.  This is one of the more demanding challenges for today’s leaders, because it isn’t covered anywhere in the current tomes and tracts on how to do management!

I’d love to hear of any examples of people or businesses doing this.

“Everything has rhythm. everything dances.”   Maya Angelou

“Rhythm is the basis of life, not steady forward progress. The forces of creation, destruction, and preservation have a whirling, dynamic interaction.”   Kabbalah

PS>> Following this blog I was called by the BBC and invited to discuss this on air, on the World Service program, World Have Your Say.  Listen to the podcast here.  I’m on twice once after about 34 min

Resources:  BBC Story  

 

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 08:48 and is filed under Business Change, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Night shift and Breast cancer”

  1. Lorna Allen says:
    16 March , 2009 at 10:41

    When I was at university, I worked nights (10pm – 8am)to support my young family and recently returned to nights to help finance my new business.

    I’ve always suspected that working nights was detrimental to health so whilst it’s sad to hear that women are developing breast cancer because they’ve worked nights for some time, it’s really not that surprising.

    I’ve only worked nights for relatively short spells but I’ll never forget the effect that it had on my physical and emotional well-being.

    I used to feel nauseous (from about 3am onwards) and used to drive home through peak time traffic in a zombie-like trance!

    Even though you nap in the daytime, you never recover lost sleep and on your days off you suffer from insomnia.

    It does disturb the body’s natural rhythm and, of course, there must be consequences.
    I hear what you say about the modern day workplace creating more sensitivity and harmony but this is a particular challenge in sectors where night work is essential (e.g. the care sector).

  2. richardderwentcooke says:
    16 March , 2009 at 10:58

    Lorna, I really value this ‘real ife’ contribution.. Thank you.

    I do understand that in the society that we have built there are certain roles we can’t do without on a 24/7 basis. However, we do need to better undstand the price we are asking them to pay.

    We do need to find creative ways to humanise the workplace, and not leave the best of ourselves behind!

  3. richardderwentcooke says:
    16 March , 2009 at 19:30

    I got called by the BBC World Service, “World have Your Say” http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/whys/ and was interviewed on this blog twice. You can download the interview which went out today on 16th March. Or listen here on BBC i-player http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p002cbw6/World_Have_Your_Say_16_03_2009/

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