Work Schedules and Sleep Hours: A Synthesis of Select Guidelines and Recommendations to Reduce Fatigue-Related Risk in Mining and Other Safety-Critical Sectors

Details

• Journal Article:
  Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration
• Personal Author:
  Barham, Max ; Bauerle, Timothy
• Description:
  Timing and duration of work can affect sleep opportunity and impact safety, with long hours prolonging exposure to fatigue risk factors, shortening sleep opportunities, and potentially misaligning natural sleep rhythms. These issues are especially relevant in the mining industry, where long working hours and continuous operations often require work outside a traditional 9-to-5 schedule. As a result, mine workers may face increased fatigue-risk, highlighting the importance of a fatigue-focused approach to work schedule design. This paper provides a synthesis of select work schedule and sleep duration recommendations relevant to industrial sectors like mining while contextualizing the results within the larger scope of fatigue risk management. A grey literature review identified 38 documents where the most common recommendations across documents, including those for the mining sector, were for shifts up to 12 h in duration with at least 10 h off between shifts, up to 7 consecutive shifts with a maximum of 56 working hours per week, and at least 24 h off between work sets. For sleep hours, the most common health-based recommendations were 7-9 h per 24-hour period and at least 5 h for safety-based recommendations. Importantly, many guidelines offered more stringent recommendations under conditions common in mining (i.e., early and night shifts). Several documents acknowledged needing to balance operational demands with efforts to mitigate fatigue risk, offering contingency-based strategies to help manage both. This synthesis gives mining safety practitioners context with which to influence schedule designs informed by industry-specific recommendations, while referencing other sectors with similar demands.
• Subjects:
  Fatigue Mining Occupational Health Safety Shift Work Schedule
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Work-schedule; Fatigue; Sleep; Fatigue-risk; Mining Work Schedules; Sleep; Fatigue; Long Work Hours; Mining Industry; Mine Workers; Risk Management; Shift Work; Work Intervals;
• Source:
  Min Metall Explor 2026 Apr; 43(2):1973-1986
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• ISSN:
  2524-3462
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Washington ; San Francisco Region [OSHA]
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  SMRD - Spokane Mining Research Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  14 pdf pages
• Volume:
  43
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20071461
• Contact Point Address:
  Max Barham, CDC NIOSH, 315 E Montgomery Ave, Spokane, WA 99207, USA
• Email:
  Pqj9@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2026
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:412e9c8d70fe78dd96b5e83fdf50c02cb6ba46d118f101bf1a58b74c12a8d61b4df7ceb16042dc7e56ad725798af704a566de45936866689bbef34b3c5775beb
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/259059/cdc_259059_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.01 MB ]