The impact of workplace heat and cold on work time loss
Objective: We investigated the impact of workplace heat and cold on work time loss.
Methods: Field experiments in different industrial sectors were conducted in multiple countries across all seasons between 2016 and 2024. Hundreds of workers were video-recorded and their full shifts (n = 603) were analyzed on a second-by-second basis (n = 16,065,501 sec). Environmental data were recorded using portable weather stations. The Workplace Environmental Labor Loss (WELL) functions were developed to describe work time loss due to workplace temperature.
Results: The WELL functions revealed a U-shaped relationship whereby the least work time loss is observed at 18 °C (64 °F), and increases for every degree above or below this optimal temperature.
Conclusions: The WELL functions quantify the impact of workplace temperature on work time loss, extending to temperatures previously believed to be unaffected.
Funding
Integrated inter-sector framework to increase the thermal resilience of European workers in the context of global warming
European Commission
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China Research Council
History
School
- Design and Creative Arts
Department
- Design
Published in
Journal of Occupational and Environmental MedicinePublisher
Lippincott, Williams & WilkinsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Rights holder
© The Author(s)Publisher statement
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.Publication date
2025-02-07Copyright date
2025ISSN
1076-2752eISSN
1536-5948Publisher version
Language
- en
