Women who spend most of their working lives on night shifts face a major increase in risk of breast cancer, researchers warned today.
Canadian researchers concluded that 30 years on nights doubled the risk of getting the disease.
The problem has previously been linked to nursing but the researchers say their findings apply to a range of occupations.
The findings, published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, comes from a study of some 1,134 Canadian women who developed breast cancer and who were compared with another 1,000 healthy women.
The researchers say they only found a link with long term working on night shifts – for periods of longer than 30 years. There was no connection between cancer risk and working nights for shorter periods.
The researchers led by Dr Kristan Aronson, of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, say sleep disturbance, vitamin D shortages and a host of factors could be responsible for the link.
They write: "As shift work is necessary for many occupations, understanding which specific shift patterns increase breast cancer risk, and how night shift work influences the pathway to breast cancer, is needed for the development of healthy workplace policy."
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