Purpose: Blue-collar workers spend much leisure time sedentary, which is associated with numerous health impairments. The extensive sedentary leisure time among blue-collar workers could be caused by fatigue from physically demanding work, like stationary standing. Occupational stationary standing is prevalent in many blue-collar jobs and has been shown to induce fatigue. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between occupational standing and sedentary leisure time over several workdays among blue-collar workers.
Methods: This study used data from 925 workers from Danish workplaces within cleaning, transportation, manufacturing, construction, road maintenance, garbage disposal, and health service. Eligible workers wore accelerometers for 2-5 consecutive workdays. A linear regression was used to investigate the association between percent of work time spent standing and leisure time spent sedentary. A multilevel growth model was used to assess the association between standing during work and sedentary leisure time over consecutive workdays.
Results: We found no association between percent of work hours spent standing and percent of leisure time spent sedentary (coef. = 0.01, p = 0.84). The results showed an increase in the workers' sedentary leisure time over a week (coef. = 0.70, p < 0.01). However, this increase was not associated with consecutive workdays exposed to occupational standing (coef. = 0.02, p = 0.42).
Conclusion: In this study, we found no support of a positive association between occupational standing and sedentary leisure time. This lack of association could be attributable to a low variation in sedentary leisure time or the chosen definition and measurement of occupational standing.
Keywords: Accelerometer; Cleaning; Manufacturing; Physical activity; Physical work demand; Transportation.