Sleep Deprivation

The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report put out by the CDC on April 27, 2012 focuses on sleep deprivation. According to their research, roughly 20% of automobile crashes are linked to drowsy driving. Using data collected from the 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the CDC determined that 30% of employed American adults get six or less hours of sleep per night. The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7-9 hours of sleep for healthy adults.

An article by Williamson and Feyer concludes that a lack of sleep can cause similar behavioral effects as being intoxicated (1):
17 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .05
21 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .08
24 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .10

The above information agrees with an article published by Australians Drew Dawson and Kathryn Reid, which relayed the results of two experiments conducted using forty participants where performance due to sleep deprivation and performance due to alcohol consumption were compared. To analyze sleep deprivation, they were kept awake for 28 hours (from 8:00 until 12:00 the following day), and in the other they were asked to consume 10–15g of alcohol at 30-min intervals from 8:00 until their mean blood alcohol concentration reached 0.10%. Cognitive psychomotor performance was measured at 30-minute intervals for both experiments.


The Results
For each 0.01% increase in blood alcohol content, performance decreased by 1.16%.
The decrease in performance for each hour awake between 10 and 26 hours was equivalent to the decrease in performance observed from a 0.004% rise in blood alcohol concentration.

References:
(1) Williamson, A.M.; Feyer, Anne-Marie. "Moderate sleep deprivation produces impairments in cognitive and motor performance equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication." Occupational and Environmental Medicine 57 (2010): 649-655. 4 June 2012. <http://oem.bmj.com/content/57/10/649.full>

(2) Dawson, Drew; Reid, Kathryn."Fatigue, alcohol and performance impairment." Nature (388): 235. 17 July 1997. <http://www.fatiguescience.com/assets/pdf/Alcohol-Fatigue.pdf>