Smokers call in sick more, have poorer performance: study

Smokers showed poorer job performance and tookmore sick days than their non-smoking colleagues, researchers have found.

In the current issue of the journal Tobacco Control, researchers tracked the career progression of more than 5,000 women over eight years after they entered the U.S. Navy.

Compared with non-smokers, frequent smokers were more likely to:

• Quit before serving their full term.
• Be discharged early for medical reasons, bad behaviour, or misconduct, including drug misuse.
• Show a higher rate of personality disorders.

On average, non-smokers were paid significantly more than daily smokers, after taking into account education and time in service.

About 45 per cent of the women had never smoked, 27 per cent were daily smokers when they enlisted, and the rest were ex smokers or smoked occasionally.

It is not clear if cigarette smoking is directly linked to slacking off.

"Cigarette smoking might simply be a 'marker' for other underlying factors, such as non-conformity and high risk taking, that contribute to poorer performance in the military," Dr. Terry Conway of San Diego State University's school of public health and his colleagues said.

More sick leave for smokers

A second study appearing in the same issue found Swedish smokerstake nearly eight more days of sick leave per year on average than their non-smoking colleagues.

Smoking has been linked to missing work, but the studies often had small samples and did not take into consideration other factors such as socio-economic background.

To reduce the risk of measurement errors, Petter Lundborg, an economist at Free University Amsterdam in the Netherlands, used a nationally representative database on sickness-related absences among more than 14,000 workers in Sweden from 1988 to 1991.

Among workers aged 16 to 65 with a range of occupations, the average total number of days taken as sick leave was 25.

Overall, smokers took the most sick leave, an average of 11 extra days, or more than two weeks of full-time work, compared with non-smokers.

"The results suggest that policies that reduce and/or prevent smoking may also reduce the number of days of sick leave," Lundborg concluded.

The results of both studies suggest smoking cessation policies may increase worker productivity.

Since factors other than smoking-related health were related to the higher number of sick days, more research is needed to assess the cost-effectiveness of stop-smoking campaigns and the societal costs of the habit, Lundborg said.