Heart Disease

About Work-related Heart Disease

Key points

  • A person's job can increase their risk of heart disease.
  • There are multiple work-related risk factors for heart disease.
  • Some jobs have a higher risk for heart disease.
  • There are things employers and employees can do to reduce heart disease.
Work is one risk factor for heart disease. Image by isayildiz/Getty Images.

Overview

Heart disease refers to health conditions that involve the heart or blood vessels.

One factor that can cause heart disease is exposure to certain social, organizational, and environmental conditions at work.

African American woman experiencing chest pain at work.
Some jobs can increase your risk for heart disease.
Keep Reading: Learn more about heart disease

Facts

Among working-age populations, work is linked to about 10-20% of all cardiovascular disease deaths.

Each year in the United States, 10 work-related factors cause 5-8% of healthcare costs and 120,000 deaths (including heart disease):1

  1. Long working hours (55 hours or more per week)2
  2. Working nights, rotating shifts, or other non-standard shifts 23
  3. High job demand45
  4. Low job control45
  5. Low job security (worried about losing one's job)
  6. Work-family imbalance
  7. Low organizational justice (feeling of being treated unfairly at work)
  8. Low workplace social support
  9. Unemployment
  10. No health insurance

Risk factors

Work-related factors

There is evidence that these job-related factors increase heart disease risk:

  • working in a job that has high effort, low reward6
  • bullying or violence45
  • lower income45
  • increased physical activity7
  • dust, fume, or chemical exposures, such as secondhand smoke and lead)891011

Other job-related factors

Your job may also influence your other risk factors for heart disease. This includes whether you have high blood pressure, high glucose, or high cholesterol. Whether you are obese, don't exercise, or have an unhealthy diet. If you are burned out or depressed, use alcohol excessively, or have problems sleeping.

Loading boxes onto a dolly can be heavy.
Some work-related physical activities can increase heart disease risk.
Keep Reading: Learn about other heart disease risk factors

Jobs most at risk

These occupations have a higher risk of heart disease.

  • Professional drivers, including long-haul truck drivers
  • First responders, including police officers and firefighters
  • Food and drink preparatory workers12
  • Fishery workers12
  • Cargo workers12
  • Civil engineer workers12
  • Plant and machine operators and assemblers13

What the data show

Did you know?‎

You can use the NIOSH Worker Health Charts to examine heart disease risk factors.
Chart data in Worker Health Charts

What you can do

Resources

The NIOSH Total Worker Health® Program advances worker well-being. It integrates work-related safety and health hazards protection with injury and illness prevention. CDC also has a Workplace Health Resource Center.

Search the NIOSHTIC-2 database to find additional occupational safety and health publications on this topic from NIOSH or a NIOSH-supported project.

Offer workplace programs and activities

Implement workplace surveillance programs

  • Do workplace health screenings and referrals.14
  • Provide portable (ambulatory) monitors for employees to more accurately measure their blood pressure while working. 615
  • Survey your workforce to understand work organization and work psychosocial stressors. These stressors may be chronic, occurring daily, or could be the result of major life events.616

Lower work-related stressors

Organizational, collective bargaining, and legislative interventions can lower employees' work-related stress and fatigue.

  • Reduce mandatory overtime.17
  • Provide family sick leave.1819
  • Increase staff in healthcare settings (e.g., provide better nurse-to-patient staffing ratios).620
  • Form workplace committees to identify and reduce job stressors (e.g., develop labor-management committees).21
  • Increase workers' influence on working time, work tasks, or work organization. 22
Keep Reading: More about preventing heart disease
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Content Source:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
  1. Goh J, Pfeffer J, Zenios SA [2015]. The Relationship Between Workplace Stressors and Mortality and Health Costs in the United States. Manage Sci. 62(2):608-628.
  2. Li J, Pega F, Ujita Y, Brisson C, Clays E, Descatha A, Ferrario M, Godderis L, Iavicoli S, Landsbergis P, Metzendorf M-I, Morgan RL, Pachito D, Pikhart H, Richter B, Roncaioli M, Rugulies R, Schnall PL, Sembajwe G, Trudel X, Tsutsumi A, Woodruff T, Siegrist J. [2020]. The effect of exposure to long working hours on ischaemic heart disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-Related Burden of Disease and Injury. Environment International (9); 142:105739.
  3. Rivera AS, Akanbi M, O'Dwyer LC, McHugh M [2020]. Shift work and long work hours and their association with chronic health conditions: a systematic review of systematic reviews with meta-analyses. PloS One 15(4), e0231037. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231037.
  4. Niedhammer I, Bertrais S, Witt K [2021]. Psychosocial work exposures and health outcomes: a meta-review of 72 literature reviews with meta-analysis. Scand J Work Environ Health 1;47(7):489-508.
  5. Taouk Y, Spittal MJ, LaMontagne AD, Milner AJ [2020]. Psychosocial work stressors and risk of all-cause and coronary heart disease mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Scand J Work Environ Health 46(1), 19-31.
  6. Landsbergis P, Garcia-Rivas J, Juarez A, Choi BK, Dobson M, Gomez V, Krause N, Li J, Schnall PL. Occupational Psychosocial Factors and Cardiovascular Disease. In Tetrick LE, Fisher GG, Ford MT, Quick JC (Eds.) Handbook of Occupational Health Psychology, Volume 3 (pp. 309-339). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000331-016
  7. Cillekens B, Huysmans MA, Holtermann A, van Mechelen W, Straker L, Krause N, van der Beek AJ, Coenen P [2022] Physical activity at work may not be health enhancing. A systematic review with meta-analysis on the association between occupational physical activity and cardiovascular disease mortality covering 23 studies with 655 892 participants. Scand J Work Environ Health 1;48(2):86-98.
  8. Bulka CM, Daviglus ML, Persky VW, Durazo-Arvizu RA, Lash JP, Elfassy T, Argos M [2019]. Association of occupational exposures with cardiovascular disease among US Hispanics/Latinos. Heart 105(6):439-448.
  9. Carreón T, Hein MJ, Hanley KW, Viet SM, Ruder AM [2014]. Coronary artery disease and cancer mortality in a cohort of workers exposed to vinyl chloride, carbon disulfide, rotating shift work, and o‐toluidine at a chemical manufacturing plant. AJIM 57(4): 398-411.
  10. Cohen HW, Zeig-Owens R, Joe C, et al. [2019]. Long-term Cardiovascular Disease Risk Among Firefighters After the World Trade Center Disaster. JAMA Netw Open 2(9):e199775.
  11. ACOEM Position Statement: Workplace Health and Safety Necess... : Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (lww.com)
  12. Fukai K, Furuya Y, Nakazawa S, Kojimahara N, Hoski K, Toyota A, Tatemichi M [2021]. A case control study of occupation and cardiovascular disease risk in Japanese men and women. Sci Rep. 11(23983).
  13. Barnes LA, Eng A, Corbin M, Denison HJ, Mannetje A, Haslett S, McLean D, Jackson R, Douwes J [2020]. The prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in different occupational groups in New Zealand. Ann Work Expo Health 64(6):645-658.
  14. https://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/tools-resources/workplace-health/cardiovascular-screening.html
  15. Huang QF, Yang WY, Asayama K, et al. Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring to Diagnose and Manage Hypertension. Hypertension. 2021;77(2):254-264.
  16. Dobson M, Schnall PL, Faghri P, Landsbergis P. The Healthy Work Survey: A Standardized Questionnaire for the Assessment of Workplace Psychosocial Hazards and Work Organization in the United States. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2023 May 1;65(5):e330-e345. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000002820
  17. Healthy Work Campaign [2020]. Healthy Work Strategies: Laws prohibiting mandatory overtime for nurses.
  18. Miller K, Williams C, Yi Y [2011]. Paid Sick Days and Health:Cost Savings from Reduced Emergency Department Visits. Institute for Women's Policy Research, Washington, DC.
  19. Gault B, Hartmann H, Hegewisch A, Milli J, Reichlin L [2014]. Paid Parental Leave in the United States. Institute for Women's Policy Research, Washington, DC.
  20. Healthy Work Campaign. [2019]. Health Work Strategies: Laws to improve nursing staffing levels in hospitals.
  21. Trudel, X., Gilbert-Ouimet, M., Vezina, M., Talbot, D., Masse, B., Milot, A., Brisson, C. [2021]. Effectiveness of a workplace intervention reducing psychosocial stressors at work on blood pressure and hypertension. Occup Environ Med, 78(10), 738-744.
  22. Aust B MJ, Nordentoft M, Frydendall KB, Bengtsen E, Jensen AB, Garde AH, Kompier M, Semmer N, Rugulies R, Jaspers SØ. How effective are organizational-level interventions in improving the psychosocial work environment, health, and retention of workers? A systematic overview of systematic reviews. Scand J Work Environ Health 2023 Jul 1;49(5):315-329. doi: 10.5271/sjweh.4097.