3
OPINION
The wellness crisis
It is up to us to do what we can to improve our employees’ mental and physical health, as well as our own.
F or most of us in the construction industry, when we think of health and wellness, we think about safety on the job site and how important it is to protect our workers from the fatal four: falls, electrocution, struck by objects, and caught between. But what actually harms people on a much larger scale is less frequently contemplated or discussed: wellness of the mind and body.
Keyan Zandy
A National Survey on Drug Use and Health puts construction at the top of all industries for drug and alcohol abuse. Their data ranks construction: ■ ■ No. 2 for heavy drinking by industry ■ ■ No. 2 for substance use disorder by industry ■ ■ No. 1 for pain reliever abuse by industry And when looking at the health of workers, according to the American Heart Association: ■ ■ One in 25 construction workers has cardiovascular disease ■ ■ One in four construction workers is obese
■ ■ One in four construction workers uses tobacco ■ ■ One in 25 construction workers has diabetes Even more troubling, the construction industry has the highest suicide rate among all industries. In fact, suicide is four times more common in construction than the national average, and five times more common than all construction fatalities combined. This numbing information, provided by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, is hard to accept. It is up to us to do what we can to improve our employees’ mental and physical health, as well as
See KEYAN ZANDY, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 27, 2022, ISSUE 1447
Made with FlippingBook Annual report