Hypothermia
As a manager, you have a responsibility to integrate safe employee practices into your production, quality and maintenance needs. At times, work conditions make safety more challenging than simply addressing employee behaviour or practice. For example, hypothermia is a hazard during the colder months that can only be detected when you know what to look for. Left unchecked, hypothermia can adversely affect your employees’ performance, leading to serious injury, illness or death.
Most of us have experienced some degree of hypothermia. The body works hard to maintain 37C, “normal” body temperature. When exposed to cold, the body reacts and attempts to re-warm itself by starting to shiver. When it reaches 33C, the body stops shivering. As the core temperature drops, the heart and breathing rates slow and blood pressure decreases. The pulse becomes irregular, slowing the heart’s ability to supply oxygenated blood through the body.
Hypothermia does not require freezing temperatures to occur; in fact, it is more common in ambient air temperatures of 13C. This is because clothing picks up moisture from physical activity and temperature changes. The wet clothing wicks heat away from the body, resulting in a generalized cooling of the inner core temperature.
Cool (rather than frigid) temperature, a light rain, and moderate to heavy physical exertion together create the perfect scenario for developing hypothermia. We know how to dress when it is bitter cold. The challenge is when we work in fluctuating temperatures, as we transition from winter to spring or autumn to winter and we look for ways to dress appropriately for the day and the tasks ahead.
Hypothermia is not the sudden onset of a condition, but develops over time as a result of exposure to the work and to the environment. As a manager, this is where your attention to your employees becomes critical. As an employee feels the increasing affects of a dropping body temperature, his or her response times drop, action levels slow, judgment and decision-making abilities may be altered, and your employee is now set to have or to create an incident.
So what can you do to help your employees remain safe from hypothermia?
1. Conduct a tailgate or toolbox training session to remind your people to wear layered clothing during changing environmental conditions. Many utility or maintenance employees wear one piece jumpsuits to stay clean, but this limits their ability to adjust to warming temperatures during the day with the cooler temperatures for early morning and dusk.
2. Rotate employees with outside assignments mid-shift when possible, or ensure short but frequent breaks for them to get out of the wind, re-warm, and change from wet to dry clothing (such as socks or outer insulating layers).
3. Encourage employees to keep a change of dry clothing nearby; having an extra shirt, socks and underwear allows the removal of wet clothing while maintaining insulation layers.
4. Schedule work assignments so employees alternate indoors and outdoors. A utility person hosing down an area under a tail pulley or crusher platform may later need to help fabricate something in the shop or monitor gauges or computer readouts in the control room.
5. Provide additional peripheral personal protective equipment, such as twill hard hat liners (quilted liners melt when exposed to heat or flame, such as welding), glove liners, ear muffs instead of ear plugs, etc.
6. Monitor work practices. An employee who is not performing up to expectations may be getting colder and be in need of an ‘indoor’ break. Taking shortcuts and skipping procedures to try and get something done faster or to make a task less strenuous sets the stage for creating an incident. Impaired judgment can lead to taking risks around equipment and failing to perform required tasks.
Hypothermia occurs because of cold temperatures that we cannot control. We can, however, control exposure to cold and eliminate or reduce the risk of hypothermia in our workplace and with our personnel.
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