DANGEROUS JOBS AND HEAVY ALCOHOL USE IN TWO NATIONAL PROBABILITY SAMPLES

Abstract

Samples of employed persons within the US were drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey II (n = 8477), and the Quality of Employment Survey (n = 1393) to test the hypothesis that a positive association existed between alcohol use and job hazards. Heavy total alcohol use, or beer or wine or liquor use separately, were the dependent variables. The key independent variables included subjects' evaluations of hazardous nature of the job and fatality rates within occupations and industries. Models were estimated with logistic regressions controlling for age, gender, race and other covariates. Only one robust finding emerged: heavy beer use was found to be positively and strongly correlated with the fatality rate within occupations. Additional correlations between job hazards and heavy alcohol use were weak, generated large P values, and some suggested an inverse association. The lack of robust findings for the additional correlations may partially be explained by the associations between job categories on the one hand and choice of beverage on the other. Blue-collar jobs are more hazardous than white-collar jobs, on average. Persons in blue-collar jobs were more likely to drink beer, while those in white-collar jobs were more likely to drink wine or liquor (spirits). Separate analyses of beer, wine and liquor appeared essential to explaining correlations between dangerous jobs and heavy alcohol use in these data. Limitations of the study included (1) age of the data (from the 1970s). (2) alcohol use and some job hazards were measured by self-report, and (3) data were from only one country.