Parsons-Journal of global health action.pdf (94 kB)
Maintaining health, comfort and productivity in heat waves
journal contribution
posted on 2013-02-28, 09:48 authored by Ken ParsonsBackground: The aim of this paper is to summarise what is known about human response to heat and to use
this knowledge to provide guidance on how to maintain the health, comfort and performance of people in
heat waves.
Design: The use of power and especially water are critical in providing cooling. A practical method of cooling
people in a water bath is described. A warm bath slowly cooled will provide effective cooling but not thermal
trauma.
Result: It is concluded that for sedentary and light activities, it is not necessary to cool offices or homes below
258C for thermal comfort.
Conclusion: To compare the costs due to loss of productivity caused by a heat wave, with the cost of taking
action, more research is needed into the relationship between levels of heat stress and how much distraction
and ‘time off task’ it causes.
History
School
- Design
Citation
PARSONS, K., 2009. Maintaining health, comfort and productivity in heat waves. Global Health Action, 2, pp. p39 - 45.Publisher
Co-Action Publishing © Ken ParsonsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publication date
2009Notes
This article was published in the journal, Global Health Action [© Ken Parsons]. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.ISSN
1654-9716eISSN
1654-9880Publisher version
Language
- en