Long Work Hours and Adiposity Among Police Officers in a US Northeast City

Abstract

Objective To investigate the associations between long work hours and adiposity measures in police officers. Methods Participants included 408 officers from the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress study who were examined between 2004 and 2009. Total work hours were abstracted from payroll records and questionnaires. Analysis of variance and covariance models were used. Results Among male officers who worked the midnight shift, mean values of waist circumference and body mass index increased with longer work hours after adjustment for age, physical activity, energy intake, sleep duration, smoking status, police rank, activities after work (eg, child/family care, sports), and household income. Adiposity measures were not associated with work hours among women on any shift. Conclusion Working longer hours was significantly associated with larger waist circumferences and higher body mass index among male police officers working the midnight shift.

Anthropometric indicators of obesity in policemen: A systematic review of observational studies

“…Spliter et al [15] have emphasized that police officers should have good physical fitness to meet the job's demands. Nevertheless, majority of the police officers, in different contexts, presented anthropometric changes that could hinder their actions [1,4,6,7,[16][17][18][19], with the exception of those in the study by Spliter et al [15], in which the target population was described as healthy and physically fit. That study's positive outcome may be related to the small sample size (12 subjects) and the average age of the participants; in other words, the sample consisted of younger officers.…”

“…[4] participants, and the cross-sectional studies ranged from 12 [15] to 408 [19] participants. With regard to the methods of obesity detection in the target population, direct measurements (body mass, fat mass, lean mass, abdominal girth, and waist circumference) as well as indirect measurements (body mass index, waist-height ratio, waist to hip ratio, and fat percentage) were used.…”

“…Among the cohort studies, Boyce et al [4] studied both men and women, whereas Sorensen et al [1] included only men. Among the cross-sectional studies, 5 studies included both men and women [6,[15][16][17]19], and 2 included only men [7,18]. The average age of the cohort study participants ranged from 24.6 to 48.7 years, and the average age of the cross-sectional study participants ranged from 32.4 to 44 years.…”

“…Two were cohort design studies [1,4] with follow-ups ranging from 12 [4] to 15 years [1] and 7 studies employed cross-sectional design [6,7,[15][16][17][18][19]. The cohort study sample sizes ranged On the other hand, in the case of cross-sectional studies, most of the results showed that the policemen were overweight and were at risk of developing co-morbidities, showed a clear increase in all variables, indicating that the police officers were overweight, with waist circumferences above the recommended measurement [1], and obese [4].…”

Body mass index in a group of security forces (policemen). Cross-sectional study

“…Adverse effects of this occupation include circadian rhythm disorders, inadequate sleep, psychological disorders, metabolic diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus and heart disease [2].…”