Elsevier

Public Health

Volume 119, Issue 4, April 2005, Pages 301-304
Public Health

Short communication
Disability retirement among former employees at the construction of the Great Belt Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2004.07.007Get rights and content

Summary

Objective

To investigate incidences of disability retirement among men who had been employed at the construction of a large traffic link in Denmark, which involved long working hours and long distances between home and work place.

Methods

Men aged 20–54 years at baseline who had been engaged in the construction of the Great Belt Link (n=5882) were followed-up for disability retirements from 1996 to 2000. Age-standardized incidence ratios (SIR) were calculated and compared with those of other construction workers (n=117,157). All economically active men in Denmark were used as the standard population.

Results

The SIRs for the two groups were 2.29 (95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.95–2.67) and 0.98 (95% CI: 0.93–1.03), respectively.

Conclusions

The Great Belt construction workers had an elevated risk for disability retirement compared with other construction workers and with economically active men in general.

Introduction

The Danish construction industry was recently involved in the completion of two large, complex tunnel and bridge traffic links. One of them reaches across the Great Belt, connecting east and west Denmark, while the other provides a fixed link between Denmark and Sweden. A third large project, the construction of the Copenhagen Metro, is in progress, and a link across the Fehmarn Belt between Germany and Denmark is in the planning stage.

One characteristic of this type of project is that they are too large to be manned completely by people who live in the vicinity. Recruitment must also include people who live far away from the construction sites. Such employees can choose to live in temporary camps or to commute long distances each working day. The recruitment of people who live far away would be difficult unless attractive work schedules were provided. Hence, a typical schedule for employees on the above construction projects was 7 days of intensive work (12 h/day) followed by 7 days off-duty.1

A population-based random sample of Finnish men showed that heavy work, noise at work, work in uncomfortable positions, long working hours, tiredness after work and periods of unemployment were associated with an increased risk for disability retirement.2 Since typical workers on large construction projects are exposed to all of these factors,3 there are reasons to believe that such people have an elevated risk for premature retirement due to disability.

The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence of retirement due to disability among men who had worked on construction of the Great Belt traffic link. The incidence was compared firstly with that among all economically active people in Denmark, and secondly with that among other Danish construction workers.

In Denmark, if work ability is permanently reduced by more than 50% due to physical or mental illness and/or social circumstances, and all possibilities for treatment and rehabilitation are exhausted, disability pension may be granted to people aged 18–64 years. The same criteria apply to all economically active people in Denmark.

Section snippets

The construction project

The Great Belt Link (1988–1998) is an 18-km road and rail link between the two major Danish islands, Zealand and Funen. The link comprises, from east to west, a bored tunnel, a high-level bridge, an artificial island and a low-level bridge.

The subjects

The study subjects (n=5882) were economically active male Danish residents aged 20–54 years at the beginning of 1996. They had been employed at some point between 1st January 1991 and 31st December 1995 by any of the major contractors engaged in the

Results

In total, we observed 163 disability retirements among former employees of the Great Belt Link, and 1605 disability retirements among the other construction workers. The age SIRs for the two groups were 2.29 (95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.95–2.67) and 0.98 (95% CI: 0.93–1.03), respectively, while the age-standardized risk ratio between the groups was 2.34 (95% CI: 1.98–2.75). With adjustment for social class, the latter decreased to 1.85 (95% CI: 1.57–2.18).

SIRs by age category are given in

Discussion

We found an elevated risk for disability retirement among people who had been employed at the construction of the Great Belt Link. The risk increased more rapidly with age than it did among economically active people in general.

A limitation of this study is its observational nature. People were not randomly assigned to work on construction of the traffic link. Different types of selection mechanism may have distorted effects from work-related factors. Lifestyle and personality factors might,

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