Graduation Year

2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.P.H.

Degree Name

MS in Public Health (M.S.P.H.)

Degree Granting Department

Public Health

Major Professor

Thomas E. Bernard, Ph.D.

Committee Member

René Salazar, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Candi D. Ashley, Ph.D.

Keywords

heat stress, heat strain, thermal work limit, TWL

Abstract

Workers are exposed to stressful thermal work environments in multiple industries every day. Methods for assessing heat stress often struggle to balance productivity without compromising the health of the workers. The Thermal Work Limit (TWL) is a method that has been adopted in areas outside of the United States as a viable method for heat assessment that combines health with productivity. TWL recommends a maximum metabolic rate for a given set of environmental conditions, clothing ensemble and acclimatization state. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the validity of the TWL against a set of heat stress data known to be at the maximum sustainable level.

A range of conditions were combined through environmental (20%, 50% and 70% relative humidity), clothing (woven clothing, WC; particle barrier coveralls, PB; water barrier coveralls, WB; and vapor barrier coveralls, VB), and workload factors (metabolic rates at low, L; moderate, M; and high, H) at the transition from sustainable to unsustainable exposure to ensure that the TWL method is thoroughly explored. Data from previous heat stress studies were used to compare the difference in predicted TWL with a calculated value.

An analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that there were significant effects of the TWL due to clothing, metabolic rate level and relative humidity level. TWL provided similar results for WC, PB and WB, but had systematically lower values for VB. This suggested a more protective recommendation with high evaporative resistance. As the metabolic rate increased, the recommended limiting TWL also went up out of proportion to the metabolic rate, which provided greater protection at increasing metabolic rates. Under drier conditions (20% relative humidity), the TWL was systematically lower than for 50% and 70% relative humidity.

While there were significant differences due to the main effects, the TWL was designed to be used without defined limits on environmental conditions, metabolic rate or clothing. Therefore, all of the conditions represented a comprehensive test of the TWL. Overall, the TWL was less protective than the current methods used by ACGIH Threshold Limit Values (TLV) and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommended Exposure Limit (REL). At the threshold, the TWL had a 7% probability of being unsustainable compared to the threshold probability of 1% for the TLV and REL.

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