At Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks

[babylonsister]

At Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: February 24, 2010


The first to have a heart attack was George Kull Jr., 56, a millwright who worked for three decades at the steel mills in Lackawanna, N.Y. Three weeks after learning that his plant was closing, he suddenly collapsed at home.

Less than two hours later, he was pronounced dead.

A few weeks after that, a co-worker, Bob Smith, 42, a forklift operator with four young children, started having chest pains. He learned at the doctor’s office that he was having a heart attack. Surgeons inserted three stents, saving his life.

Less than a month later, Don Turner, 55, a crane operator who had started at the mills as a teenager, was found by his wife, Darlene, slumped on a love seat, stricken by a fatal heart attack.

It is impossible to say exactly why these men, all in relatively good health, had heart attacks within weeks of one another. But interviews with friends and relatives of Mr. Kull and Mr. Turner, and with Mr. Smith, suggest that the trauma of losing their jobs might have played a role.

“He was really, really worried,” George Kull III said of his father. “With his age, he didn’t know where he would get another job, or if he would get another job.”

A growing body of research suggests that layoffs can have profound health consequences. One 2006 study by a group of epidemiologists at Yale found that layoffs more than doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke among older workers. Another paper, published last year by Kate W. Strully, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, found that a person who lost a job had an 83 percent greater chance of developing a stress-related health problem, like diabetes, arthritis or psychiatric issues.

more...


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/us/25stress.html?ref=business

[whistler162]

1. Talk about obvious conclusions!

Well at least the researchers kept busy....

[NNN0LHI]

2. Recommended

[Igel]

3. Where my father worked a lot of people died soon after retirement.

They'd work 40+ hours a week, shiftwork, for 30 years. It was essentially their life: high school education, you start work, get hitched, work to provide for your family and pay your mortgage, your kids would leave home (also with a high school education, to start work), then you'd retire.

They'd have nothing to do at home. Their wives would have no need them at home. They'd sit. They'd eat. They'd watch tv. They'd have no purpose. They'd wind up fighting with their wives.

They'd die of heart attacks, or gain 40 pounds and die of hypertension and stroke. A lot would be depressed and a few years later die of cancer. If you made it through the first 5, you'd probably go 20 or more years into retirement.

[SoCalDem]

4. Men have traditionally been intertwined with their work

It's not unusual for men who have been just introduced, to FIRST tell about their work..where they work, what they do at work.. when work is taken from them...for any reason, many men lose their identity, and depression sets in..

Having longevity added to the recent mix, does not help.. When lifespans were shorter, men died while still working, and people commented sadly about them being "cut down in the prime of life"..but now their jobs get snatched away from them at least a decade before they WANT to leave work, and leaves them with the task of "supporting the family" with NO JOB..

At least when they were union workers with pensions, they knew that if they died, their families would be taken care of.. now they have no pension. no savings, probably no insurance and then suddenly..not even a job.. but they still have the obligations..the family..and probably many years to do that.. It;s got to be like a dagger to the heart:cry:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

5. That's not uncommon.