Americans who log long hours on the job find the time for
leisure and other activities by cutting down on sleep, a study
reports today. "We only have 24 hours in a day," says Mathias
Basner, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of
Medicine. His study of 47,731 Americans found that people who
worked more simply got up earlier or went to bed later — a
practice that puts them at risk of sleep deprivation. Time spent
at work is the single biggest determinant of how much sleep
Americans got on a typical day, according to the study in the
Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep. But travel time, including
time sitting in traffic on the way to work, comes in second
place, Basner says. "You could argue there's a hidden cost to
living in suburbia," says Gregory Belenky, director of the Sleep
and Performance Research Center at Washington State University
in Spokane. People who live in sprawling urban areas often make
a long workday even longer when they try to run errands on
clogged roads, he says. Basner s