Federal Agency in Design Phase of Long-Term Research on Truck Driver Health
WASHINGTON — A federal research agency that focuses on the study of worker safety and health is in the design stages of a major longitudinal study to track changes in longhaul truck drivers’ health status and the factors associated with those changes.
Karl Sieber, a research health scientist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, last week told the Transportation Research Board’s subcommittee on operator health and wellness that his agency is in the preliminary stages of a study to make repeated observations of the a variety of truck driver health behavior variables over long periods of time.
Sieber asked members of the subcommittee Jan. 10, during a session at TRB’s annual meeting here, for ideas on what factors should be included in the study.
The new research is a follow-up to a 2015 NIOSH study of longhaul heavy-duty truck drivers with freight delivery routes requiring them to sleep away from home most nights. The 2015 study used data collected from 1,670 longhaul truck drivers at 32 truck stops across the country. The data was based on a survey about self-reported health conditions and health and safety risk factors.
The new research is a follow-up to a 2015 NIOSH study of longhaul heavy-duty truck drivers with freight delivery routes requiring them to sleep away from home most nights.
That research revealed that more than two-thirds of respondents were obese and 17% were morbidly obese. In comparison, only one-third of U.S. working adults were reported to be obese and 7% morbidly obese.
It concluded that obesity increases the chance for Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, heart disease, cancer, joint and back pain and stroke. These health conditions can disqualify a driver from receiving their commercial driver license and essentially take away their livelihood.
NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, headquartered in Atlanta.
In his presentation, Sieber said research has shown that the lifestyle of longhaul truck drivers too often results in such health problems as high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Drivers also are exposed to truck vibration and diesel exhaust and use drugs, smoke, drink alcohol excessively and get less sleep than the general population of U.S. workers, Sieber said.
The study could, for example, use a combination of health-related records and truck stop surveys to trace driver health over a long period, perhaps as early as the start of their career to the present, or work backward from their current state of health to that when they began driving, Sieber said.
The study also could include a comparison of condition of health and work conditions to driver safety records, he said.
“This has not been decided, but the given idea is to look at the prevalence of various conditions over time,” Sieber said.
