>> Hangovers - A Pain in the Workplace

Excessive drinking by employees cost businesses and industries worldwide billions of dollars each year in absenteeism and lost productivity, but it is not the heavy drinkers or alcoholics who are mostly responsible.

New research shows that it is the light or light-to-moderate drinkers who cause the most problems. More than half of all alcohol-related problems in the workplace are caused by light drinkers, and 87 percent by light-to-moderate drinkers.

The problems are mostly due to hangovers.

In the workplace, the greatest cost incurred by alcohol is the decreased productivity of affected employees as a result of hangover-related absenteeism and poor job performance, Wiese says.

In Finland, which has a population of 5 million persons, more than 1 million workdays are lost each year because of hangover. Light-to-moderate users of alcohol -- 0 to 3 drinks per day for men and 0 to 1 drink per day for women -- account for most of the lost-work costs because they make up most of the work force.

The primary morbidity that affects light-to-moderate drinkers is the hangover, not the long-term consequences of alcohol abuse, such as cirrhosis and cardiomyopathy. Chronic alcoholism is responsible for only a small proportion of the total societal cost of alcohol use, the report said.

Researchers also found that people with hangovers posed a danger to themselves and others long after their blood alcohol levels had returned to normal, suggesting that hangovers could be more insidious than actual inebriation.

"Even if you don't feel severely hungover, your cognitive abilities, concentration and technical skills may actually be diminished," Wiese said. "With inebriation, you're at least more aware of it perhaps more than with a hangover."