Work making you sick?

New research suggests that people who work at night - the so-called 'Graveyard Shift' - might be at risk of contracting breast and prostate cancer. So serious is the concern that next month, overnight shift work will be listed as a probable carcinogen with the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer.
That said, there is no proven link between cancer and night work. There may be other factors that shiftworkers have in common, like constant disruption of their body's biological clock - the circadian rhythm. As well, melatonin, the hormone which can suppress tumor development, is normally produced at night - and it may be that it can only be produced in the absence of light.
And it's not just shift workers who can be affected; it may be anyone whose light and dark schedule is often disrupted - including frequent long-haul travelers or insomniacs.
So, how to reduce the risk? Try not to flip between day and night shifts; sleep in a darkened room; and, if you can, work under lights with the color which seems to least affect melatonin production - red! (Red, incidentally, is the same colour they use for viewing nocturnal animals/birds, or for not disrupting views of the night sky.)