Why Is It Called The Graveyard Shift?
The night shift ( midnight to 8 a.m. ) is often called the graveyard shift, and it is for good reason. People who work nights are two to four times more likely to fall asleep on the job and have accidents, according to the National Commission of Sleep Disorders Research. The Sleep Disorders Clinic at St. Luke’s Medical Center in St. Louis , under the direction of James Walsh, Ph.D., asked 30 graveyard-shift workers to perform a series of tasks every hour for one night. He gauged their sleepiness using standard tests. He replaced their 500 lux lighting the next night with 9,000 lux lights. After only one night under the bright lights, the workers’ accuracy showed dramatic improvement, while their sleepiness decreased. “One night’s exposure to bright light seems to have shifted their biological clocks,” Dr. Walsh explained, ” enabling them to perform better on subsequent nights.” Chickens, Eggs and Light In 1987, the Wall Street Journal reported that chickens raised under full-spectrum l
