By CATHY BUSSEWITZ, AP business journalist
On a hot summer day in Oak Ridge, TennesseeDozens of men removed pipes, asbestos and unsafe waste as they worked to decontaminate a nuclear facility and prepare it for demolition.
Dressed from head to toe in overalls and equipped with respiration masks, the crew members, who toiled in a constructing without electricity, had no discernible respite from the warmthInstead, they wore bracelets that recorded their heart rate, movement and exertion levels to detect signs of warmth stress.
Stephanie Miller, a security and health manager for a U.S. contractor doing cleanup work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, watched a close-by computer screen. A color-coding system with small bubbles showing each employee's physiological data alerted her when any of them were in peril of overheating.
“Heat is one of the biggest risks we face in this work, even though we work with high levels of radiation, dangerous chemicals and heavy metals,” Miller said.
While the world experiences more Record temperaturesExplore employers wearable technologies To ensure the protection of employeesNew devices collect biometric data to find out core body temperature – an elevated temperature is a symptom of warmth exhaustion – and prompt employees to take cooling-down breaks.
The devices, originally developed for athletes, firefighters and military personnel, are being introduced at a time when the Atlantic Council is reducing heat-related losses in Labor productivity could cost the United States about $100 billion annually.
However, there are concerns in regards to the security of medical data collected on employees, with some employees' associations fearing that managers could use this data to penalize employees for taking needed breaks.
“Any time you put a device on a worker, they're very concerned about tracking, privacy and how can you use this against me,” said Travis Parsons, director of occupational health and safety on the Laborers' Health and Safety Fund of North America. “There are a lot of exciting things out there, but there are no guardrails for it.”
HEAT DANGEROUS
The employees on the Tennessee cleanup site wearing heat stress monitors made by Atlanta-based SlateSafety are employed by United Cleanup Oak Ridge, a contractor with the U.S. Department of Energy, which has regulations to stop overheating within the workplace.
But most U.S. employees lack protection from extreme heat because no federal regulations they require, and plenty of vulnerable employees Do not speak or seek medical help. In July, the Biden administration proposed a rule to guard 36 million employees from heat-related illnesses.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 986 employees died from heat exposure within the United States between 1992 and 2022. Experts suspect the number is even higher because a coroner may not list heat because the reason behind death if a roofer suffers a fatal fall in sweltering heat.
Attitude Occupational safety standards could be difficult because every body reacts otherwise to heat. This is where the manufacturers of portable devices want to begin.
HOW PORTABLE HEATING TECHNOLOGY WORKS
Employers have identified heat-related symptoms in employees by taking their temperatures with thermometers, sometimes rectally. More recently, firefighters and military personnel have swallowed thermometer capsules.
“This simply could not have worked in our work environment,” said Rob Somers, Global Environment, Health and Safety Director at Consumer Product Perrigo Companysaid.
Instead, over 100 employees in the corporate's infant formula factories were equipped with SlateSafety wristbands. The devices measure the wearer's core body temperature and trigger an alarm when the reading reaches 38.5 degrees.
Another SlateSafety customer is a Cardinal Glass factory in Wisconsin, where 4 masons maintain a furnace that reaches 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
“They're right up against the wall. So it's them and the fire,” said Jeff Bechel, the corporate's safety manager.
Cardinal Glass paid $5,000 for five wristbands, software and air monitoring devices. Bechel believes the investment can pay off; one worker's two heat-related emergency room visits cost the corporate $15,000.
Another portable device, made by Massachusetts-based Epicore Biosystems, analyzes sweat to find out when employees are susceptible to dehydration or overheating.
“Until a few years ago, you would just wipe off the sweat with a towel,” said CEO Rooz Ghaffari. “It turns out that all this information that we were missing is hidden there.”
Research has shown that some devices can successfully predict core body temperature in controlled environments, but their accuracy in dynamic workplaces shouldn’t be yet proven, experts say. A 2022 research review found that aspects corresponding to age, gender and ambient humidity make it difficult to reliably measure body temperature with the technology.
Clad in protective gear, United Cleanup Oak Ridge employees can begin to sweat even before demolition begins. Managers see dozens of sensor alerts day-after-day.
Worker Xavier Allison, 33, recently removed heavy parts of the pipes Heatwave when his device vibrated. Since he was working with radioactive materials and asbestos, he couldn't go outside to rest without going through a decontamination process, so he spent about quarter-hour in a close-by room that was just as hot.
“Just sit by yourself and try to cool down,” Allison said.
The bracelet notifies the employee when she or he has cooled down sufficiently and may resume work.
“Since we introduced the system, the number of people needing medical attention has dropped significantly,” Miller said.
Collection of non-public data
United Cleanup Oak Ridge uses the Sensor data and an annual medical exam to find out work assignments, Miller said. When the corporate noticed patterns, it sent some employees to their primary care doctors, who discovered heart problems the workers hadn't known about, she said.
At Perrigo, managers analyze the info to seek out individuals with multiple alerts and confer with them to seek out out if there’s “a reason why they can't work in that environment,” Somers said. The information is sorted by identification numbers, not names, when entered into the corporate's software system, he said.
Companies that retain medical data for years increase Privacy concerns and whether bosses can use the knowledge to kick an worker off medical health insurance or fire them, says Adam Schwartz, director of privacy litigation on the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“Honestly, the device might hurt because you could raise your hand and say, 'I need a break,' and the boss might say, 'No, your heart rate is not elevated, go back to work,'” Schwartz said.
To minimize such risks, employers should give their employees the selection of whether or to not wear monitoring devices, process only absolutely needed data and delete the knowledge inside 24 hours, he said.
Wearing such devices may expose employees to unwanted promoting, says Ikusei Misaka, a professor at Musashino University in Tokyo.
A partial solution
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health advises employers to develop a plan to assist employees adapt to hot conditions and train them to acknowledge signs of heat-related illness and supply first aid. Wearable devices could be a part of efforts to scale back heat stress, but their accuracy needs more study, says Doug Trout, the agency's medical officer.
The technology must even be paired with access to breaks, shade and funky water, as many employees, especially in agriculturefear retaliation in the event that they take a break to chill off or drink.
“If they don't have water to drink and don't have time to drink it, it doesn't mean much,” said Juanita Constible, senior attorney on the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It's just something extra they have to carry around when they're in the hot fields.”
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Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.
Originally published:
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