As we are finally coming out of a cold winter in many areas and I was thinking about some of the risks that we will start to encounter again as the weather warms up. One of the many risks that come to mind is heat stress. This reminded me of a heat related incident that occurred where the temperature was hot, but it wasn’t hot enough to trigger warning signs in the work force. One of the lessons learned from the incident was, “Acclimation to working in heat, a significant heat risk factor, is unlikely to occur in some temperate zones due to the short duration of the daily warm temperatures.” When you read stratus’ Heat/Cold Stress Defined Practice, there is a section on Heat Stress Acclimation. It states it takes 4 to 5 days to get acclimated to heat, but the acclimation can also be lost in the same amount of time (I’m sure the acclimation process takes much longer if it only heats up for a short period of time during the day). So remember when you are looking at the work/rest cycles to protect against heat-related illness we are assuming the work force is acclimated. Additional precautions should be taken for the non-acclimated work force.

Here is the link to the lesson learned in 2008 (click here).