Study Shows Fatigue Increases Speed, Mistakes
According to a new study, lack of
sleep may affect the attentiveness of airport baggage screeners --
and, in turn, could compromise passenger safety.
Dr. Nayantara Santhi, Research Fellow at Brigham and Women's
Hospital in Boston, kept 31 healthy people awake for 36 hours
straight and asked them to perform a visual search task every two
hours. The longer they were awake, the quicker they searched -- and
the more mistakes they made, according to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution.
"These results suggest that safety and performance in socially
critical low target prevalence search tasks may be especially
vulnerable to the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation," Santhi
said.
The National Air Traffic Controller's Association has long
pointed to a lack of sleep causing problems in the tower, recently
made worse by increasing staffing shortages.
Just this week, as ANN reported, the NATCA
said 1,000 controllers have left the field in the last two years,
leaving those that remain fatigued. Fatigue was cited as a reason
for mistakes leading to near-misses.
"This is a concern because of fatigue. We have less people
working, which means we are going to have more people working
positions longer and traffic longer," said NATCA spokesman Dan
Horwitz.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been aware of the
importance of sleep for decades. So much so, it made specific rules
that are strictly adhered to.
"Regulations limiting flight time
and pilot rest have been in place since the 1940s. Current FAA
regulations impose an eight-hour limit for a pilot's flight time
during a 24-hour period, provided the pilot has had at least eight
continuous hours of rest during the 24-hour period. If a pilot's
actual rest is less than nine hours in the 24-hour period, the next
rest period must be lengthened to provide for the appropriate
compensatory rest," according to the agency.
According to the American Association of Sleep Medicine, not
sleeping well may lead to a number of problems. People not
getting enough sleep are more likely to have a depressed mood,
attention and memory problems, excessive daytime sleepiness, more
nighttime falls, and use more over-the-counter or prescription
sleep aids.
In addition, recent studies associate lack of sleep with serious
health problems such as an increased risk of obesity,
cardiovascular disease and diabetes.