As pressure intensifies in our working lives, scientists are discovering that stress not only triggers illnesses but may be a killer in its own right...The masters of the work ethic - the Japanese - are in no doubt that workrelated stress is a killer. Their language even has a name for it - karoshi, which means death by overwork. Most of its estimated 10,000 victims a year die from heart failure; a few are driven to suicide. The phenomenon of karoshi is sufficiently recognised to appear routinely on death certificates; families of victims have filed hundreds of claims for compensation. Many succeed, although no company has yet been successfully prosecuted for working an employee to death.