IF YOU give up smoking when No Smoking Day comes round again, here鈥檚 some
good news. While you鈥檙e more likely to have an accident at work, you鈥檙e no more
disaster-prone than usual behind the wheel of your car.
Heavy smokers typically start to feel edgy and have trouble concentrating
within a few hours of their last dose of nicotine. Last year, Andrew Waters of
the Institute of Psychiatry鈥檚 National Addiction Centre in London wondered if
these withdrawal symptoms would make people more accident-prone on Britain鈥檚
annual No Smoking Day, the second Wednesday of March.
To find out, Waters combed 10 years of industrial health and safety records.
He found that the number of falls, lifting injuries and other accidents causing
three or more days of disability increased on No Smoking Day compared to the
preceding or following Wednesdays
(This Week, 11 July 1998, p 22).
Advertisement
Waters suggested that nicotine-deprived drivers might be similarly afflicted.
This prompted Jackie Knowles, a statistician at the Transport Research
Laboratory in Crowthorne, Berkshire, to review 10 years of daily government
records of crashes in which people were injured. But she has found no
significant difference between the number of crashes on No Smoking Day and on
the Wednesdays before and after (Nature, vol 394, p 137).
Jeremy Broughton, who worked with Knowles on the traffic
study, concludes that No Smoking Day has no effect on traffic accidents. 鈥淵ou
can鈥檛 find it,鈥� he says.
Waters still thinks there may be an increase in accidents, but that it is
difficult to measure. Factors such as the weather may swamp the smaller effects
of nicotine withdrawal, he says. And at work, irritability and inattention can
take their toll over the entire day, while people spend far less time in cars.
鈥淚t鈥檚 like comparing a football match of two hours to one of ten minutes.鈥�