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Background and Objectives: Heat stress is considered as a serious threat to the
health and safety of workers in many industries, including petrochemical and
steel. Assessment of the heat stress is important from the disease prevention
point of view and also for the safety and performance of workers at workplace.
Although there are many indices to evaluate the heat stress, it is hard to
select an applicable index for a wide range of weather conditions. The purpose
of the study was to develop an optimal index based on physiological parameters
in a petrochemical industry.
Materials and Methods: The study was conducted in a petrochemical industry located in Assaluyeh (south
of Iran).
Twenty one healthy young men at different levels of fitness and heat
acclimation volunteered to participate in the study. Physiological parameters
including heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, skin temperature
and oral temperature were measured during the working day over two consecutive
weeks. Simultaneously, we measured the climatic parameters required to
calculate the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), required sweat rate (SWreq),
and the discomfort index (DI) indices.
Results: All the
measurements took place on 2 sites: Kar (working place) and Paziresh (resting
room). Our results showed that the mean
values of indices and physiological parameters
in Kar for both acclimated and
unacclimated groups were significantly higher than Paziresh (P<0.05). There
was the strongest linear correlation between WBGT and heart rate (0.731),
systolic blood pressure (0.695) and diastolic blood pressure (0.375) and skin
temperature (0.451) respectively. The amounts of DI were 0.725, 0.446, 0.352,
and 0.689 respectively. But the strongest linear relationship existed between
SWreq and deep body temperature (0.766).
Conclusion: There
were significant differences in the present indices and physiological
parameters of Kar and Paziresh, confirming the previous studies findings.
Finally, WBGT was considered optimal index and the results revealed the almost
perfect linear correlation between WBGT and heart rate. We propose WBGT can be
the most applicable index for evaluating heat stress in this climate.
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