WORK hard, drink hard. The largest ever analysis of working hours and alcohol consumption has found that people who work over 48 hours a week drink more than people with standard working weeks.
Marianna Virtanen at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and her colleagues pulled together data about more than 330,000 people from 14 countries, including the US, UK and Germany.
Their study is the first to calculate how likely hard-workers are to develop potentially dangerous drinking habits. Compared with a standard 35 to 40-hour week, people working between 49 and 54 hours a week were 13 per cent more likely to drink at “risky” levels – defined as 14 drinks a week for women, and 21 drinks a week for men. This was the case regardless of gender, location or socioeconomic group (The BMJ, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.g7772).
The study provides strong backing for the European Union Working Time Directive, which gives those in EU countries the right to work no more than a 48-hour week. But many still end up putting in over 50 hours to earn faster promotions or strive for a living wage through overtime.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Driven to drink”
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