Working the Graveyard Shift May Increase Cancer Risk

Sometimes I think that the list of things that AREN'T potential carcinogens is shorter than the list of possible suspects. Seems like every year something else is added to the lists and then you don't hear that much about it anymore. Everybody knows about smoking and UV rays and a few years ago it was radon gas. They were saying that everyone should get their basements checked to see if there was an accumulation of this gas that, if you breathed it in, was much worse than even smoking. Hardware stores began selling radon detectors and companies formed to get rid of the stuff if you found that the level in your house was too high.

More recently it was cell phones that bombard your brain with radiation and cause a tumor. And just a few days ago the news reported that CAT scans (scans that take a series of X-ray pictures to diagnose disease) may be responsible for as many as 2% of all the cancers reported. Also, let's not forget what slapping that piece of steak on the BBQ grill will do to your colon.

Now it seems that working the graveyard shift may also increase your risks of certain types of cancer such as breast cancer in women and prostrate cancer in men. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is a branch of the World Health Organization, will soon issue a report that says overnight shift work is a possible carcinogen. There are other risk factors that may be common among overnight workers but scientists suspect that the graveyard shift may interrupt the body's circadian rhythms or the biological clock. The hormone melatonin, which is known to suppress tumors, is produced at night. Light naturally shuts down melatonin production. Although this was not in the research papers, I think that the opposite might also be true. We know that vitamin D plays a role in preventing certain types of cancer and it is produced from sunlight, so I think that the lack of sunlight may be a factor also.