The heat equation is a simple way to determine the circumstances under which the human body’s cooling system could fail, and when employees exerting themselves physically in the heat could be at risk of heat illness.
Any environment that combines high temperature, high humidity, and physical exertion—whether work or sport—is a prime source of the kinds of heat-related illness that we identified in yesterday’s Advisor.
How the Body Cools Itself
The body has a natural cooling system that is used to protect internal organs—particularly the brain—from increases in temperature. When blood temperature exceeds 98.6° Fahrenheit, your heart rate increases and your blood circulates closer to the surface of the skin. This allows heat to transfer out of the blood and into the cooler environment outside the body. But this heat transfer is only effective if the temperature outside the body is less than inside.
If your body can’t lose enough heat by transferring heat out of the bloodstream, your brain will signal the sweat glands to start sending fluids to the surface of the skin.
Once the sweat reaches the surface of the skin, the sweat will be evaporated off the skin by the hot, dry environment outside the body. The body’s heat will dissipate with the evaporated sweat.
But when the humidity is high as well as the temperature, the body’s natural cooling system isn’t very effective. High heat prevents cooling through heat transfer out of the bloodstream, and high humidity prevents sweat from evaporating. The result can be heat-related illness.
Need information about heat safety? Great news! BLR’s renowned Safety.BLR.com® website is now available in Version 2.0. Take our no-cost site tour! Or better yet, try it at no cost or obligation for a full 2 weeks.
Simple, Quick, and Effective
Whether it’s heat safety or any other safety and health topic, BLR has what you need to train employees efficiently and cost-effectively.
That’s because safety meetings are the perfect format for communicating information mandated by OSHA, by your employer, or simply by your personal desire to keep employees safe. And Safety.BLR.com is all about safety meetings.
Safety meetings are a great forum for communicating information. Safety meetings are efficient, cost-effective, and practical. The half hour or so you spend once or twice a month will be repaid with fewer accidents and a safer workplace. What more could you ask from any safety initiative?
This kind of practical, actionable advice is just one of the reasons why we think Safety.BLR.com is such a terrific resource for safety professionals. In addition to giving you ways to make your safety meeting better, it also provides you with more than 185 prewritten safety meetings on just about any topic you can imagine.
Training responsibilities become a snap with the website’s thousands of audio presentations, PowerPoint® presentations, meetings, toolbox talks, trainer’s guides, and much, much more. You’ll find training tools on more than 150 safety topics along with plain-English compliance analysis and other resources.
At a time when budget considerations are paramount, what makes more sense than an all-in-one safety training and compliance solution?
Now there’s much more of a good thing! Try the new Version 2.0 of Safety.BLR.com. Go here to take a no-cost site tour or here to try it in your own office.
And BLR® recently revamped Safety.BLR.com to meet your needs even better. Those of you who used the site in its original version will be amazed by all the new features and functionality. Highlights include:
- Side-by-Side State/Federal Compliance. By placing our state and federal regulatory analysis side by side, you easily see how to fully comply with both governmental entities.
- MSDS Library Expansion. The site now provides an immense library of 3.5 million MSDS forms, with about 10,000 more added or changed every week. Need one? Just call up the chemical by name, manufacturer, product group, or CAS number, and then print it out.
- Newsletter Wizard. If you’ve ever wanted to publish a safety newsletter but felt lacking in editorial skills, this new addition is for you.
- Plan Builder. Select from our library of safety plans, customize them to suit your company’s needs, and assemble them into collections you can save in your personal library.
We’re pretty excited about Safety.BLR.com and all of its recent enhancements, and we’re eager for you to experience it, too. That’s why we’ve created a complimentary site tour, available here. It takes just 5 minutes.
If you like what you see, you’re invited to try the site at no cost and with no obligation. We’ll even give you a complimentary special report for doing so. Go here to take a 5-minute tour of the new Safety.BLR.com. It may be just what you’re looking for.
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Solving OSHA’s Recordkeeping Maze