The husband of an AT&T manager who died from a blood clot after sitting at her desk for more than 10 hours is entitled to workers' compensation benefits, a New Jersey appellate court has ruled.
In its decision, the court upheld a lower court's ruling that Cathleen Renner died from a pulmonary embolism shortly after she finished working a 10-hour, sedentary shift at her computer in her home office in Edison, N.J.
"There's an awful lot of people that do nothing but sit in front of computers for work these days, and there's a certain risk involved with that," said Patrick Caulfield, a lawyer for the family.
The workers' compensation judge determined that the petitioner's claim was compensable under the standard governing cardiovascular injury or death; AT&T appealed.
The appellate court upheld the lower judge's decision and ruled that the husband, James Renner, was entitled to benefits under the state's workers' compensation law.
In its decision, the appellate court says, "On Monday, Sept. 24, 2007, Cathleen began working on a project at home in the evening. The parties disputed the length of time she worked that night, but computer records demonstrated that Cathleen sent an email to a coworker at 12:26 a.m. When her son awakened at 7:00 a.m., Cathleen was at her desk in her home office. At 9:00 a.m., Cathleen advised a coworker that she was not feeling well but would keep working to complete the project. She finished the project from home and sent an email to a coworker at 10:30 a.m. At 11:34 a.m., Cathleen called 911 because she could not breathe. She was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital."
The ruling further states that a medical expert for the defense "concluded within a reasonable degree of medical probability that Cathleen's work effort of sitting at her desk for long periods of time contributed to a material degree in causing her death. He acknowledged Cathleen had other risk factors, such as obesity and using birth control pills, but reasoned that her inactivity while working was to blame because the blood clot was unorganized and therefore, developed within the time period she was working."
The case is widely considered the first of its kind, and legal experts—citing the specificity of the case—thus far are unsure of its impact.
However, in a remarkable coincidence, a team of researchers for the American Cancer Society released a study within weeks of the New Jersey ruling that links time spent sitting to higher risk of death.
Researchers led by Alpa Patel, Ph.D. analyzed survey responses from 123,216 individuals (53,440 men and 69,776 women). The participants had no history of cancer, heart attack, stroke, or emphysema or other lung disease. The team examined the amount of time the participants spent sitting and their physical activity in relation to their mortality rates between 1993 and 2006.
They found that more leisure time spent sitting was associated with a higher risk of mortality, particularly in women. "Women who reported more than six hours per day of sitting were 37 percent more likely to die during the period studied than those who sat fewer than 3 hours a day," the study reveals. "Men who sat more than 6 hours a day were 18 percent more likely to die than those who sat fewer than 3 hours per day."
The authors further note that women and men who both sat more and also were less physically than their counterparts were 94 percent and 48 percent more likely, respectively, to die compared with those who reported sitting the least and being most active.
"Several factors could explain the positive association between time spent sitting and higher all-cause death rates," says Dr. Patel. "Prolonged time spent sitting—independent of physical activity—has been shown to have important metabolic consequences, and may influence things like triglycerides, high density lipoprotein, cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, resting blood pressure, and leptin, which are biomarkers of obesity and cardiovascular and other chronic diseases."
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