By Don Dressler, Don Dressler Consulting
It’s been a warm winter and promises to be a hot summer – are you prepared for preventing heat illness?
Although it’s only spring, the thermometer has hit triple digits in some parts of California. During the weekend of April 21-22, Death Valley cooked at 113° F, Needles baked at 107° F and Palm Springs simmered at 104° F. Things cooled down considerably in the following days, but more hot weather is sure to come.
Federal OSHA is focusing nationally on heat illness prevention, in California, Cal/OSHA is already out inspecting and enforcing its heat illness prevention standards, and the State of Washington Outdoor Heat Exposure rules take effect May 1 of each year.
Are you informed and ready? This is not just a workplace issue, of course. Over 120 high school football players died from heat illness between 1960 and 2009, and now over 18 children die annually from heat illness in sports related activities. We can do better.
To learn how your employees can come through this summer safely, join us for a webinar: “Heat Illness: How to Keep Your Workers Safe and Productive When the Mercury Rises” on May 9. We have a 3 member panel who will discuss why 40% of all heat fatalities occur on the very first day of work, and 80% occur on the first 4 days of work—and these do not need to happen.
We will discuss how hot it has to be to be concerned about heat illness (80° F or even lower in some cases) what heat illness is, how to prevent it and how to treat it. Joining in the discussion will be Sheilaja Mittal, MD, from WorkWell Medical Group, of Salinas, CA; Gil Molina, from Fresno, CA who works with agricultural employees; and Don Dressler who has written heat illness prevention plans and training materials for employers.
Don Dressler of Don Dressler Consulting of Irvine, California has been working with safety recordkeeping for over 15 years as the head of an agricultural trade association’s safety and loss control staff and since 2003 as a safety and human resources consultant and attorney. Dressler focuses on safety, employment and human resources issues, accident investigations, OSHA compliance and workers’ compensation.
For those of us who missed the webinar, DOSH is providing heat illness prevention training classes; a. A list of dates and locations is available on DOSH’s heat illness http://1.usa.gov/JsG2Wg.
For those of us who missed the webinar, DOSH is providing heat illness prevention training classes; a. A list of dates and locations is available on DOSH’s heat illness http://1.usa.gov/JsG2Wg.