b'WORKPLACE HEALTH & SAFETYTHE INVISIBLE EPIDEMICSituational awarenessI nsufficientsleepamongtheworkforcehasreachedepidemic proportions. In 2008, the U.S. National Sleep Foundation found that adults were getting an average of six hours and 40 minutes among workers is critical toof sleep nightly during the workweek, well below the seven to nine hours of quality sleep that is the scientifically recognized maintaining safety at pitsminimum people need to function at their best. Twenty minutes lost sleep may not seem like a lot, but the effect and quarries, and it all startsis cumulative. And because its an average, a lot of people are doing worse than that. Some substantially worse: another study found that in 1942, less than eight per cent of the population was getting by on with a good nights sleep less than six hours sleep a night; in 2017 that figure was nearly 50 per cent. To quote Matthew Walker, director of the Center for Human By Andrew Brooks Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, what we have is a catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic.Byunderminingworkplacesituationalawareness(SA),fatigue essentially adds to an individuals cognitive workload on the jobnot by adding new stimuli and stressors, but by impairing the ability to perceive and respond to the already-existing normal ones. Fatigue reduces awareness, diminishes risk aversion and transforms dangers that would usually be minor, easily identified and avoided into serious and often life-endangering threats. Theresaveryclosecorrelationbetweensleepdeprivationand blood alcohol concentration equivalents, says Mitch Cowart, a safety technology expert with Caterpillar Inc. He points to a 2000 study that found that subjects deprived of sleep for 17 to 19 hours performed onsometestsatthesamelevelaspeoplewithabloodalcohol concentration of 0.05 per cent, with seriously degraded response times and accuracy measures. 12 AVENUESFALL 2021'