If you're in the Northeast like me, you've been broiling for the past few days. And so have your workers. Here's a neat little heat stress demonstration that I came up with when I was working for PSEG as a Safety Engineer that you might want to try.

The Ingredients

This is what you'll need to conduct the demonstration:

The Instructions

Begin your meeting by discussing how the body maintains its "normal" operating temperature. Use the following as a guide:

While sitting quietly, an adult's metabolic rate is between 90 and 130 watts. (Hold up one light bulb.) When you start doing "light" work, such as sitting at a bench and putting parts together or driving a car, you produce several more watts. Depending on the work, your metabolic rate will reach 200 watts. (Hold up two bulbs.)

If you're doing "moderate" work, such as walking about and carrying boxes, your body might produce up to 300 watts. (Hold up three bulbs.)

While doing "heavy" work, such as digging or climbing, you produce between 400 and 500 watts. (Hold up five bulbs. You may need help if you don't have big hands.)

When the work is sustained and very strenuous, your body may produce 700 watts. (Hold up all seven bulbs.)

Your body must get rid of the excess heat and maintain its core temperature or your organs will malfunction. To encourage heat loss, your brain signals for sweating to increase and blood vessels throughout your skin to dilate, allowing more blood to reach the surface, (just like water that cools a car's engine circulates through the radiator to become cooled). As the sweat evaporates, it releases heat, thus reducing the load on your body.

On an average summer day (80-95°F) your body's three million sweat glands will pump out about two quarts of fluid composed of ammonia and salts. However, if the humidity is high and the work is heavy you may lose 33 oz., more than a quart, of fluid in 30 minutes! (Hold up the quart container.)

If you drink an 8 oz. glass of water every 15 minutes, you'll return one pint of liquid to your system every 30 minutes. This is still 17 oz. LESS than what you lost. (Put the empty pint container in the catch basin and pour the quart of water into it. Show your audience the overflow.)

The purpose of this demonstration is to emphasize the need to stay hydrated when working in hot environments. Though 33 oz. of fluid loss per 30 minutes occurs under severe conditions, it's not uncommon in many industrial settings for people to lose a quart of fluid an hour.

Conclusion

There's nothing like props to drive home an important message. Try out this little demonstration and see if it doesn't make an impression on workers about the dangers of heat stress. Let your audience know that one of the easiest and most effective ways to avoid a heat illness is to drink plenty of water before, during and after work. Stay cool, everybody.

HAWK-ISMs

1 down, 15,249 to go

The World According to Richard

By Richard Hawk

Editor's Note: When it comes to making safety training fun and engaging, Richard Hawk is the undisputed guru master. In his Safety Stuff newsletter, Richard includes offbeat and informative "Tidbits." Here's an assortment of some recent gems from the Tidbits files. Richard's website, www.makesafetyfun.com, is an absolute must.

* Average American drivers will honk the horn 15,250 times during their lifetime.

* Sleep researchers have discovered that when clocks are set back an hour at the end of Daylight Savings Time, automobile accident rates drop, probably because of the extra hour of sleep.

* A bottle of champagne has three times as much air pressure as the tires on a car.

* About 65,000 people in the U.S. per year are hospitalized with lawn-mower-related injuries.

* According to the Environmental Protection Agency, as much as 5% of all polluting exhaust in urban areas is from lawn mowers.

* Odds that one of your party guests will peek into your medicine cabinet: 40%

* Tsunami waves can move from one shore of the Pacific to the other in less than a day.

* The likelihood that a jogger will die jogging this year: 1 in 7,600.

* Women who smoke are likely to have menopause 1-2 years earlier than those who don't smoke.

* It's against the law in Jefferson City, Missouri, to tie a boat to the railroad tracks.

* Bestselling medicines worldwide: cholesterol-lowerers, antidepressants and ulcer drugs.

* A Columbian company makes a stab-proof T-shirt. Price $500.

* There are fewer deaths annually from skydiving than from bee stings.

* As many as 500 people die each year getting in and out of the tub.

* Parking garages rank third among top locations for violent crime (after homes and public streets).

* The Titanic was running at 22 knots (about 25 mph) when it hit the iceberg.

* People most often killed during bank robberies: The robbers.

BART'S BLACKBOARD

By Richard Hawk

Every episode of The Simpsons opens with Bart's writing something on the blackboard. Here are a few "safety and health" related Bart-isms:

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