Science News

The Japanese Are Working Themselves to Death

You might think you're overworked but did you know that in Japan, people often die from working too hard? They call it "karoshi" - death by Overwork. Until now its been very hard for relatives to prove that overwork was the cause of death - although 40 compensation claims are made each year, they rarely get paid out. But now a team of Japanese researchers have proved that there's a connection. In a survey, people who worked more than 180 hours overtime in 10 months were far more likely to die than people who hadn't worked as many hours.

20th Jan 2002