How Heat Stress Affects Performance
When the ambient temperature of the surrounding air is 95 degrees F or higher, radiation, convection, and conduction stop working. Evaporation is all that is left to cool the body.
Education of employees is the most critical element in reducing heat stress-related accidents in the workplace.
NIOSH notes in its publication "Occupational Exposure to Hot Environments," (1986) that although workers can acclimatize themselves to different levels of heat, each worker has an upper limit for heat stress beyond which that worker can become a heat casualty. Further, it has been shown that a worker's ability to focus attention and the worker's reaction times can be dramatically reduced by even a 2 percent dehydration level due to heat stress.
It's accepted that businesses such as foundries, heavy machine manufacturing, shipbuilding, and a variety of others have areas that subject employees to heat stress. In temperatures as low as 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the human body compensates for heat levels in the inner core by pumping blood to the skin for cooling. When combined with the fact that most people (an estimated 80 percent of the U.S. population) start the day in a dehydrated state, heat stress is a major contributing factor in preventable accidents and work-related injury.
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Source: Occupational Health & Safety Online
