Its Official that you are more likely to die from a Blood Clot (DVT) sitting at your desk than on a long haul flight. Thanks to the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand who have published research whose objective was to study the relationship between those who get blood Clots and prior activities the victim was involved in.
In summary the results shown that 34% of those what had Blood clots were as a result of sitting at a desk too long without a break, whereas only 21% of clots was as result of a flight. Some of the office workers had reported that there were often seated at there desks for 3 or 4 hours at a time without getting up.
Professor Beasley said the problem was most common in the information technology industry and in call-centres. It says to me that such companies need to find new ways of working to ensure the health of their employees or face the future legal consequences.
I myself know that technology companies who for example don’t encourage healthy working. Instead workers are encouraged to worker longer and longer sitting at the desk without any breaks or micro breaks. I remember working at one company some years back where actually encouraged people to eat lunch at your desk and type with the other hand!
I am wondering if we’ll see an increase of industrial injury claim against such companies as a result. When is business going to learn that treating their employees badly does have consequences both financially and legally. Maybe the threat of company profits and share prices being affected may encourage some sort of responsibility? Yeah, I know.. probably not.
For the complete report refer to the BBC Health News web site.
