long-hours culture is killing us

"Ronald Reagan was wrong, it seems, when he said: 'Hard work never killed anyone.' Death from overwork is not a new phenomenon in Britain but it is largely unremarked upon."
There are a few snippets in this worth drawing attention to:
"overtime and extended work schedules are associated with an increased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, fatigue, stress, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, chronic infections, diabetes and other general health complaints. In Japan, most karoshi victims succumb to brain aneurisms, strokes and heart attack."
'Karoshi' is the Japanese term for working yourself to death.
And we are not just talking mega-hours here:
"the risk is not just confined to those who work more than 60 hours but hits those that put in more than 45."
And the health of our businesses is affected too:
" our long-hours culture is also bad for business because lower working hours relate directly to higher productivity. It is no coincidence that the UK has the least-regulated economy in Europe and is the least productive in the industrialised world." I wonder how long before that gets into actuarial accounts and starts to affect insurance? The Japanese experience is sobering:
"In 1987, the Japanese ministry of labour acknowledged that it had a problem with death from overwork and began to publish statistics on karoshi. In 2001, the numbers reached a record level with 143 workers dying. Now, death-by-overwork lawsuits are common, with the victims' families demanding compensation payments. In 2002-03, 160 out of 819 claimants received compensation."
All this is explored in "Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives" by Madeleine Bunting.
Guardian Unlimited Money | Work | Work until you drop: how the long-hours culture is killing us: