![]() ![]() ![]() If a worker is experiencing heavy sweating, headache, dizziness, nausea, or vomiting, he or she could be suffering from heat exhaustion. Heat-related illness comes, broadly, in four forms, moving from less dangerous maladies such as heat rash or heat cramps to severe and possibly fatal heat exhaustion and heat stroke.īasic treatments for mild heat-related issues may seem obvious: If a worker is having muscle spasms or pain, he or she should rest in a cool, shady area and drink water or other non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic drinks. In 2014 alone, 2,630 workers suffered from heat illness and 18 died from heat stroke and related causes on the job. Department of Labor and OSHA recorded 109 heat fatalities in the U.S., though that number doesn’t include incidents reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics that fell outside federal and state OSHA jurisdiction. Unfortunately, this subcontractor isn’t alone. The subcontractor had heat stroke, from which he ultimately died. No one recognized how bad off he was, Webster says. While he’d had some water that day, he also drank some caffeine-packed energy drinks.Īt one point the worker told the jobsite foreman he did not feel well, so the foreman had him rest in a shaded area. (KWA would not release further information on either the worker or subcontractor.) The man, in his 20s, had just transferred from New Mexico, and he wasn’t used to the heat and humidity of a Texas summer. “He wasn’t training or doing anything that involved a lot of lifting or climbing,” says Holly Webster, director of administration at Texas-based KWA Construction, which served as the general contractor on the job. ![]() It’s not a particularly taxing job, but he was doing it in direct sunlight. On a jobsite in Kingsville, Texas, in August 2013, a worker was mixing gypsum concrete in preparation for gypcrete installation on an apartment building. Share "Protect Your Jobsite Crews From the Summer Heat" ![]()
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