The Relationships between Human Fatigue and Public Health: A Brief Commentary on Selected Papers from the 9th International Conference on Managing Fatigue in Transportation, Resources and Health

Abstract

The 9th International Conference on Managing Fatigue in Transportation, Resources and Health was held in Fremantle, Western Australia in March 2015. The purpose of the conferences in this series is to provide a forum for industry representatives, regulators, and scientists to discuss recent advances in the field of fatigue research. We have produced a Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health based on papers from the conference that were focused on various aspects of public health. First, the Special Issue highlights the fact that working long shifts and/or night shifts can affect not only cognitive functioning, but also physical health. In particular, three papers examined the potential relationships between shiftwork and different aspects of health, including the cardiovascular system, sleep disordered breathing, and eating behaviour. Second, the Special Issue highlights the move away from controlling fatigue through prescriptive hours of service rules and toward the application of risk management principles. In particular, three papers indicated that best-practice fatigue risk management systems should contain multiple redundant layers of defense against fatigue-related errors and accidents.