People Often Go To Work Sick When They Should Be At Home

http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png

Many people often go to work sick which others simply just take for granted, without carefully understanding or weighing any of the risks involved that could be damaging to public health.

People often go to work sick and continue to do so

In a recent poll undertaken by a collective research and media firm collaboration, findings reveal that a majority of working adults in the United States continue to go to work even when they have a cold or flu, risking harmful effects on public health.

No less than half of this working population are working in public places like restaurants, hospitals and supermarkets.

Spearheading the study was the collective group of NPR.org, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The findings suggest that the alarming situation is something that should not be neglected because these personnel are the same one your least expect to report to work sick due to their constant direct exposure with other people.

Even just a simple cough or sneeze could rapidly spread harmful germs or viruses that get transferred one after the other, especially with those working in indoor or confined spaces.

Airborne and foodborne diseases

“It’s one of the biggest food safety problems that there is, and we’ve known about it forever,” says Kirk Smith, who oversees foodborne outbreak investigations with the Minnesota Department of Health.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention points out that one of the biggest problems food handling becomes a major transporter of diseases like the norovirus, a foodborne disease, which makes up a whopping 35% of all viruses transferring hands through food and contamination.

“And so it just takes microcontamination of your hands, if you don’t do a perfect job washing, to be able to contaminate food with enough of the virus to infect lots and lots of people,” says Smith.

Stay at home when sick to be safe

The Food and Drug Administration strongly advises the public to stay at home when sick, which is stated in a ‘Food Code” for workers who are sick to stay at home no less than 24 hours after their symptoms disappear. Many states, however, have not adipted this health code for workers.

The post People Often Go To Work Sick When They Should Be At Home appeared first on NUTRITION CLUB CANADA.