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#108: "Hot" Topics and New Proposed OSHA Regulations with Dr. Todd
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In this episode, Jill gets to discuss a seriously hot topic! Dr. Todd Loushine, associate professor in the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Occupational Safety program, ASSP Region Five vice president, and returning podcast guest, sat down to discuss workplace heat. In 2022, Dr. Todd lucked into a temporary position outside of the university, helping with heat-related problems when a company’s safety director took a leave of absence. Tune in to hear how a certified industrial hygienist, who also happens to be a professional engineer, came up with unique — but replicable — solutions for heat safety issues, learn a little about the science behind heat-related illness, and find out how you can give your input on a proposed OSHA regulation.
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Transcript
Introduction to Accidental Safety Pro Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded September 11th, 2023. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer.
Meet Dr. Todd Lucheen
00:00:19
Speaker
My guest today is my friend, Dr. Todd Lucheen.
00:00:23
Speaker
Todd is Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, in the Occupational Safety Degree Program and is also Vice President of ASSP's Region 5. Todd is a professional engineer, a certified industrial hygienist, and a certified safety professional. If you've been listening to this show for any amount of time, you've heard Todd a number of times now, and today I've asked him back to discuss a hot topic.
Workplace Heat Issues and Solutions
00:00:50
Speaker
Hot topic is a pun because we are actually talking about heat as in workplace heat. Todd uses background as an IH and engineer to successfully cool the workplace and every time we talked this summer he told me about what he was doing and every time he told me about the things he was
00:01:10
Speaker
deploying and using as an engineer and as an industrial hygienist, the more I wanted him to share what he learned with all of you. So welcome back to the show Todd. Thank you for having me back, Jill.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, you're welcome. So, you know, we have a lot of places we'd like to go here and I and I know we want to talk about, you know, briefly about OSHA's proposed regulation. But just to try to set the stage a tiny bit, how is it that a professor at a university ended up in a workplace trying to solve a heat related problem? Well, you want to just like start there a little bit and we can come back to that
Dr. Todd's Experience in Workplace Safety
00:01:50
Speaker
story. But how did that happen?
00:01:52
Speaker
Well, I don't have much of a personal life. No. It came down to a lot of people come to me to help fill positions because I've got current students, former students. And when I was originally contacted a friend through a friend, I thought maybe they wanted an intern. And so I set up a meeting to hear more about it so I could try to get them the right students.
00:02:14
Speaker
And it came down to no, they need someone boots on the ground because their current safety director, EHS manager had gone off on sort of a personal leave. And they weren't sure when they were going to get back. And I looked at my I went and toured the plant. And I really liked the people. I really was interested in what I could
00:02:39
Speaker
do there and so you know off you know I just kind of said hey um would you mind if I applied and they said yes when do you want to start so that's how it all happened it was just it was a series of of luck basically that allowed me to get in there and I even though I'm exhausted from holding two full-time jobs
00:03:00
Speaker
I wouldn't have traded it for the world. Such great people. I've learned so much and I've been able to test so many things that I've been teaching or assuming for years that I feel that I'm a much better well-rounded safety professional and a much better well-rounded and applied professor. That's wonderful. And how many months have you been doing this moonlighting gig? I started three days after Christmas last year.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah, okay. And you're not doing this forever. There's an end date, right? There is, yeah. We're going to help them try to find a replacement and train them in at the end of November into December. So I'm hoping by the end of 2023, I just have one full-time job.
00:03:44
Speaker
Yeah, right. Exactly. Oh, man. Interesting. Well, it's been so fun to be a part of the journey with you and hearing about what you're learning in this facility.
Climate Change and Heat Exposure
00:03:54
Speaker
And in the introduction, I talked about OSHA's proposal rule is for indoor and outdoor workers in the setting that you've been moonlighting in as an indoor workplace.
00:04:05
Speaker
And that's something that, you know, I think in a stereotypical fashion, when we think about workplace heat, we think about people who work outdoors, which they're exposed to a lot of heat too. But we're seeing, you know, so much more indoor exposure to heat as our planet continues to warm and, you know, places in the country that used to be cooler are now hotter.
OSHA's Heat Regulations: Challenges and Progress
00:04:32
Speaker
Is that what you're noticing too?
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, you don't have to look very far. You can look at the National Weather Service or NORA. And yeah, they basically have already identified the summer of 2023, the hottest summer on record. Yeah, yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
So Todd, let's talk briefly about OSHA and their proposed regulation and kind of what's going on there. And maybe you and I can also add our own history of what we know about OSHA and how slow the wheels of change move within the agency when it comes to proposed rules. But do you want to give kind of a recap? What's going on? What's going on there with OSHA?
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's quite the journey to figure out what they have done. And so it looks like they originally proposed the beginning discussions of assembling a group to create this
00:05:29
Speaker
know, heat standard to cover all workplaces in October of 2021. And they were hoping to wrap up the comments before December of 2021. Well, they've extended that deadline now. And I believe they extended it a second or possibly a third time, simply because this is not a
00:05:52
Speaker
Okay, I hate to bring this up, but I I'm sort of tripping over it similar to like the ergonomic standard. It's like, yes, we need it. But when you try to set up certain standards, it doesn't fit all the workplaces or all the situations or
00:06:08
Speaker
you know, overexertion and musculoskeletal don't, you know, occur in people the same way, because there's individual resistance or adaptability. And so I think that's where they're having issues that it looks like they're maybe trying to set something up by region. And I think that that's a good idea, because us people up north,
00:06:30
Speaker
we have thicker blood and so we like the cold down south they like the heat and so they're better acclimated to it they can put up with more of it but it was just interesting this summer to see the extreme heat that they are experiencing down there and then we get a heat warning excessive heat warning up here in the upper midwest and it's it's scary for us we're not used to it we're not you know our bodies
00:06:57
Speaker
I can't just adapt instantaneously to high humidity, high heat. They're a little bit more better for that. But when it gets really cold, we're in a pretty good position. It's like, oh, it's negative 200. Yeah, I can put on a jacket now. Yeah. We know what we're doing. Yeah. And Todd is saying from the Upper Midwest, Todd currently lives in Wisconsin. I live in Minnesota. We both were born and raised in Minnesota. So we're talking about the Upper Midwest.
00:07:26
Speaker
You know, when we think about what you said about OSHA and a proposed standard, so proposed standard means OSHA comes up with this idea, right, on the most basic level. And you come together with a draft regulation. And then when you try to promulgate something new, there's a public comment period. And that's what Todd was talking about. So everybody, including everybody here listening, has the ability to read the draft and comment on it.
00:07:54
Speaker
And Todd, you were saying they've extended the comment period a couple of times. When I checked it earlier today, the previous comment period had closed in January of 2022. And at that time, there were 965 comments, individual comments. And now it's been opened again.
00:08:14
Speaker
and so if anyone wants to be able to comment on that regulation OSHA is actually asking for more and they're specifically asking for certain types of industries to comment because they want to hear from everyone as they're trying to pull this pull this law together and yes the wheels of change at OSHA do go very very slowly for anyone who is familiar with the OSHA 300 log which you likely all are
00:08:42
Speaker
It used to be called the OSHA 200 log, and it took 10 years. 10 years, Todd, remember that? 10 years, they kept saying, oh, we're going to update this thing. It took 10 years before it went from the 200 log to the 300 log. Hopefully, this standard doesn't take 10 years.
00:08:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And even to go, you know, more into, you know, I'm scrolling through as we're as we're talking and in, you know, referring to, again, the ergonomic standard that was repealed.
Balancing Work-Rest Schedules and Profitability
00:09:12
Speaker
It's it's difficult to come up with a one size fit all like like the machine safeguarding standard. It's you can pretty much apply that in all different things. Loco Tagout same way. You think of some of the health standards. They've got really good data for this.
00:09:26
Speaker
Oh, man. I think one of the sticky points, especially when they do get it adopted, will be the work-rest schedule. Because I know ACGIH, before you had to pay to access their stuff, when you reach a certain wet bulb, globe temperature, or heat index, there's like a percent of the hour they should be resting in a cool place versus working. And then we have to start thinking about, what do they call that, reasonable accommodation? I believe that's the work comp term.
00:09:55
Speaker
Um, in order to, you know, what, how much do you, are we expecting employers to, I don't want to use any bad terms, but you know, can they still be profitable?
00:10:07
Speaker
when workers are only putting in 15 minutes every hour based on that schedule. Yeah. And certainly, there are things that you can do to mitigate that so the company can continue to be profitable, which are some of the things that you did this summer. Before we get to that, I just want to circle back in case someone's saying, hey, wait a minute. I want to comment on this proposed law. Where do I go, Jill and Todd? So it's regulations.gov.
00:10:37
Speaker
And you'll be able to find the OSHA comment there. So it's the comment period on heat injury and illness prevention in outdoor and indoor work settings. And maybe we'll be able to include that in show notes for the podcast. You know, Todd, you said a bunch of words that some people might not be familiar with, with wet bulb and dry
00:11:00
Speaker
bulb, globe temperatures and humidity things. I wanted to just circle back for a second before we get into that. This regulation that OSHA is proposing, it's new for OSHA, but it's not new for all OSHA. So when I say all OSHA, I mean state OSHA programs.
00:11:22
Speaker
There are three state OSHA programs in the United States that have laws on the books already regarding workplace heat. So those states are California, Minnesota, and Washington. Minnesota, where Todd, you and I worked for OSHA, they've had a law for a long time, a unique regulation,
00:11:43
Speaker
for indoor workers and some of the things that you just referenced a moment ago are pieces of that law. Washington has one for outdoor workers and so if anyone wants to look up that to be able to use any of those regulations maybe as a guide in your own workplace you can certainly do that as well.
00:12:02
Speaker
I just want to cover one more thing with OSHA before we dig into some other things. If employers right now are listening, you as EHS practitioners are listening and thinking well maybe I don't have to worry about this until this law comes to pass in terms of should I be doing things or do I have to you know tell my employer like you know maybe we don't have to do anything right now because there isn't a law.
00:12:28
Speaker
Todd, do you want to talk about how OSHA might propose citations against an employer when there isn't a law that's specific? Well, yeah, they currently use the General Duty Clause, the 5A1, because it's a known, it's a recognized hazard. And what they're basically asking you to do is assess it. If people are working outdoors,
00:12:53
Speaker
or they're indoors and either in a heat producing industry or environment. You know, we're talking laundry, we're talking bakery, you know, anything, any machines that get boundaries, boundaries, definitely, or a building that just doesn't have air conditioning.
00:13:09
Speaker
you need to take steps to protect your workers. I mean, it should be somewhat common sense, but some places probably think, well, it's hot outside. What am I supposed to do? Well, there are things you can do. Yeah, right. For sure. So when we think about the law, what's the justification for doing
Health Impacts of Heat Exposure
00:13:31
Speaker
it? And the question might be, are people dying?
00:13:34
Speaker
They are, and, you know, they try to give you the 10 year, oh, in the last 10 years, 15 years, this is how many. I quick looked at the numbers, and it's usually about 0.9 to 1.4% of all the fatalities are caused by heat-related illness.
00:13:52
Speaker
But let's not use just that statistic to justify the need for a standard because you have to look at the emergency room visits. You have to look at people who just fall ill at work. And here's the thing, too, Jill, and, you know, heat stress, that's actually the feeling of it. Heat related illness can actually
00:14:15
Speaker
affect a person's ability to comprehend what's going on around them, possibly mitigate their ability to control their body. And so it actually puts them in in harm's way that maybe they can't respond to normal issues in the work environment or they may over
00:14:31
Speaker
overdo it in some capacity over exertion was the word I was looking for. So I mean, and the some of the sensors that I put up around my plant, it would give me that warning that it's getting hot. And did you know that when it's hot, people may not make the right decision or and then we talk about, you know, okay, you're required to wear personal protective equipment.
00:14:50
Speaker
well, that's gonna affect them too, they may not want to wear it, it may be uncomfortable to be sweaty. So there's a lot of secondary and tertiary concerns when it comes to people who have to work in hot environments and how their bodies respond to it. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. So you mentioned heat related illnesses. And so one of the areas, you know, that you one of the places you likely started when you were when you've been working in the plant is educating
00:15:17
Speaker
employees and management about what heat related illnesses look like and kind of the biology and mechanics of it. Do you want to talk about that piece briefly and what you learned and some of those key things you shared as we continue to move on?
00:15:31
Speaker
Of course. So one of the first things is I was sort of told that, oh, it gets hot in here in the summer. So then I sat down with representatives in the safety committee and I said, kind of give me, give me some more information. You know, this is the workers recollections. And they said, yeah, it seems to get really hot. Um, yeah, they might bring us, you know, some treats or something, but it just seems like the company doesn't have much of a plan. So I'm like,
00:15:56
Speaker
gulp. Let me get on this. So in my first meeting to the big group, I expressed how concerned I am about how people adapt to their work environment or don't, you know, when it comes to working in heat, I explained some of the basics. But what I really focused on is when I was in graduate school,
00:16:15
Speaker
Um, I got done with work early one day and I was waiting for my wife to come pick me up. So I was playing some, um, two on two basketball behind, um, one of the athletic complexes in Madison and all of a sudden I just felt horrible.
00:16:31
Speaker
Like, you know, I was kind of disoriented. I was sweating excessively. I started getting nauseated. And I, you know, I said, I got to get out of here. And I went and got some Powerade or Gatorade to sip because they had vending machines on the inside. And I sat in the shade and just kind of realized this is heat related illness. I'm going through it.
00:16:55
Speaker
And, you know, I did not expect it to happen. I hadn't played basketball in a while, but that shouldn't have caused it. Um, and so, but it was, it was a frightening experience. And I can only imagine a worker, you know, on a line that they're just not feeling well, but they're looking around at everybody else and everybody, nobody else seems to be responding. So like, well, maybe I didn't eat, maybe I ate something I shouldn't have, or maybe I didn't get enough sleep or something like that. But it's that wait and see approach to it.
00:17:23
Speaker
that is the makes it fatal because if you get to a certain point the body is going to convert its objective to protecting the internal organs and now you have limited blood supply going to the extremities and that means the brain too and it's just putting you in a situation where things can go rapidly scary quickly.
00:17:47
Speaker
And so being aware, taking steps as soon as a symptom presents itself, you're you should be able to provide immediate relief and make sure the person doesn't have to rush to the hospital, but to know that rushing the hospital is a possibility when a certain threshold of symptoms has been exhibited.
00:18:09
Speaker
Right, exactly. And so for those of you listening who haven't thought about providing training for employees on what does heat-related illnesses look like, how do they present themselves, what actions should you be taking, when should employees be reporting things to you, add that to your ever-growing list of things to do for sure.
00:18:32
Speaker
Todd, you talked a bit about heat versus humidity. So let's kind of dig into that piece from your vantage point as an industrial hygienist. How is heat measured? What do you measure it with? What's the difference between heat and humidity? And maybe some approaches people can take if these are sort of unfamiliar things to them.
00:18:56
Speaker
Okay, and just just to kind of go what you just said for the audience, the two sources I use would be the OSHA.gov heat, and then also heat stress under NIOSH. Those are my two primary sources. But then as an academic, I also have access to, you know, published research. And so I did, you know, borrow from all three sources when I was putting together my program.
00:19:18
Speaker
Now back to the question you just brought up about temperature, humidity, and what that does. So let's boil this down to its instance. And that is an individual is attempting through their exposure to environmental conditions and the work they're doing, so they're generating heat within their body to regulate to a certain temperature.
00:19:39
Speaker
I mean, as you all know, when we have when we have an infection, you know, viral bacterial infection, we may run a fever, that's the body's response to attempting to fight that infection. But in this case, it's not the body attempting to heat itself up, it's the body's inability to regulate itself, given
00:20:01
Speaker
the temperature and humidity in their environment and what that basically is, you know, what do we do when we get hot? We sweat. And it's the evaporation of that sweat that gives the skin the cooling and the body tends to then also put more blood flow towards the skin to capture that cooling and send it back through the body in order to regulate the temperature.
00:20:21
Speaker
The environment becomes more humid we're talking humid above seventy for sure eighty is much more dangerous anything below fifty we consider somewhat comfortable that that's that's decent at the decent humidity level in which people can sweat habit evaporating cool.
00:20:37
Speaker
Um, but when it gets that high and people can't when the body can't achieve adequate cooling through sweating because the sweat is not evaporating or the person isn't sweating, that's a dehydration condition. The body is just going to continue to heat up. It's almost like a runaway reaction.
00:20:54
Speaker
And so therefore, you have to also train on symptoms too. So we can look at temperature, we can look at humidity. When I talked about wet bulb globe temperature, that also includes radiant heat. That's the the globe, the black globe. Was that a globe temperature? Yeah, I think that they call it globe temperature. I was dealing indoors, so I'd have to worry about that. But when you're outdoors, yes, radiant heat can also be a factor.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, so let's talk about, thank you for that piece on what's happening in the body.
Monitoring Workplace Temperature and Humidity
00:21:27
Speaker
Let's talk about how do you go about measuring the temperature, not of a human being, but of the atmosphere indoors or outdoors. And same thing with the humidity. What sort of devices do people use, Todd?
00:21:43
Speaker
Well, I mean, one is in is a wet bulb globe monitor, a heat stress monitor, it measures that for you, you just tell it whether it's indoors, outdoor, and it calculates it for you. But for those of us who can't afford those types of gadgets, you know, there are there's ways to estimate or extrapolate. I know that OSHA has a heat stress app you can attempt to use. Okay, that's more going to be based on meteorological data.
00:22:12
Speaker
indoors you can use your basic thermometer to measure it but humidity can be a little bit trickier you could use the archaic sling psychrometer which it has a a wicked
00:22:29
Speaker
um with you dampen a wick below one of the thermometers and the other is the dry bulb and you swing it like a nunchuck and it can tell you the kind of you can estimate the humidity that way what i did in my workplace is i found this really inexpensive digital sign which provided the ambient noise levels in decibels
00:22:50
Speaker
and the temperature and the humidity. And so I thought good bang for the buck because I need to do both. So I set them up around the plant and then just manually tracked things against the outdoor temps or the meteorological data in my area.
00:23:07
Speaker
And it was able to start trending. So I was then able to forecast or approximate what the heat burden or heat index may be for my workers. And then management was like, wow, that's cool. How would you like to upgrade that system? And then they got me 10 sensors that I could put around the plant wherever I wanted that actually data logged it for me and allowed me to monitor it for my cell phone so that I could track and predict. And that's that was the game changer.
00:23:35
Speaker
that given what the temperature and humidity could be at any point during the day, I could estimate, well, one, when I should be shutting doors and windows, which is a scary thing when it's hot out, but you want to maintain whatever coolness or lower humidity that you have. And so I had to figure that out wouldn't be the best time to do that. But secondarily,
00:23:58
Speaker
when do we need to be cautious or maybe just prepare ahead of time that there may be a chance that we have to send people home or you know take more breaks whatever it might be so every I mean I think in the standard what they should do is just like you have to monitor noise levels for the hearing conservation program just like you should be monitoring airborne contaminants before you institute a respiratory protection program
00:24:22
Speaker
They should have monitoring of temperature and humidity or wet bulb, globe temp, whatever you want to use, and then estimate given those conditions, what would be the best way to protect the workers.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah. So Todd, you mentioned, you know, we might have to send people home, we might have to make some changes. Before you get to making those decisions, you need to determine how hot and humid is too hot and humid. So do you want to talk about how you determined that? Because
00:24:55
Speaker
Again, we don't have a lot to go on, right? We don't have a lot that if it's this temperature and this humidity, then you must do X, Y, and Z. We have states who have laws like that. We have some guidance from NIOSH and other organizations. So how did you decide for your location for anyone who's wondering like, when do I start doing some of this stuff? How did you determine what your action levels were?
00:25:20
Speaker
I pulled charts from the NIOSH website and the CDC website and then I did a basic literature search through the research journals I have access to and I found a few
00:25:40
Speaker
I'll say tables or figures that gave ranges. So it had axes. So it had the temperature on one side and the humidity on the other, and then the estimated heat index in between. And then what I did is I used all of the recorded data that I had taken from inside the plant.
00:25:56
Speaker
and how I felt and how I saw other workers feeling. And I kind of put everything together. And I started with sort of a range, that here to here. And over time, just by studying what's
Developing Heat Safety Policies
00:26:10
Speaker
going on in the plant and other things I was reading, I came to a table in which I had temperature and humidity, limits for, and I had three levels. I had caution, warning, danger.
00:26:23
Speaker
And I presented it to management. They had never seen anything like it. And I said, it's based on the data I'm collecting here. It's based on multiple sources of research and, you know, Nash and CDC. But I said, I believe this is a very fair, but conservative in a way that we can protect workers because I don't want anybody going down on my watch. And they're like,
00:26:46
Speaker
sounds good. So what are we going to do? So we, we, you know, we came to an agreement management, we all came to an agreement that if things do hit this danger level, this is going to be the reaction. When things hit the warning level, this is going to be the reaction. And once in the caution level, this is what we're going to do just to keep basically was get everybody down on the floor a little bit more often, and make sure people are drinking water, make sure they have access to electrolytes, whether it's in popsicle form or part of foreign put in their water.
00:27:14
Speaker
that we make sure that, you know, are we closing things and covering windows to prevent radiant heat from coming in? So it was it was a wide range, sort of a comprehensive approach to try and mitigate heat humidity levels, but at the same time, provide workers with the ability to take a break when they did it in an air conditioned cafeteria or whatever, access to cold water, access to ice, all that stuff, and then intense training and reminders.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah. And so, and so you've, you know, you've, you've talked about the education piece. You've talked about, you know, coming to an agreement, which, you know, we might use the term policy, like you essentially you developed a policy to say, okay, here's based on, based on your research, based on what we know, here's the, you know, the, what did you say the caution danger? And what was your third category? It was caution warning danger.
00:28:10
Speaker
caution warning danger. And then also the other piece that I believe you put into the mix was it depends on what kind of work activity people are doing, right? I mean, the law that I mentioned from Minnesota defines moderate work activity, light work activity, and heavy work activity, and then it defines it. Did you put that into your policy or your agreement that you had with leadership as well?
00:28:37
Speaker
Yes. So any industrial hygienist who's listening knows that we try to sample worst case scenario because then we are assured that by extrapolating those results, what might be safe. So I was able to narrow to two different areas that I used as my primary sources to find out that.
00:28:53
Speaker
If they if those areas reached a warning or danger level that if it's in the middle of the day or early in the day that the rest of the plant will too. So let's be proactive. And so that that's how I again this this I don't want it to sound like that I was kind of guessing but sometimes it's trial and error to see how things go. We did have two people.
00:29:15
Speaker
uh one person was a new worker she just she started exhibiting the symptoms i taught her and she took some time to sit in a cool area and cool down and then she came back right away another one the person was actually experiencing an anxiety attack it just happened to be on a hot day but we still got him the you know the treatment he needed because we were so concerned about the heat stress so interestingly enough maybe
00:29:40
Speaker
this guy, maybe he wouldn't have done anything if we hadn't, you know, trained on heat stress. So, you know, that's another thing too, is that it made workers more aware of how they feel and to look out for each other and that supervisors should get out and talk to workers more, which we could talk about the secondary benefits of all that too.
00:29:59
Speaker
For sure, for sure. OK, so let's switch over to one of your other degrees, engineering. So one of the first times you called me the summer and said, hey, I'm going to go into the plant tonight. It's getting really hot. I'm going to try a few things that I know and see if I can lower the temperature. And so can you, for anyone who's listening who's not a professional engineer, Todd,
00:30:28
Speaker
and most of us aren't like where did you start and some maybe some things that the listeners can be like oh I didn't know that would work because hello I'm not an engineer but Todd is can you talk about some of the things that you did that you tried things that people should be paying attention to and what ended up working
00:30:50
Speaker
That's a great question. So coming into the summer season, I kind of heard the manager saying, OK, everybody, we've got to get ready. We need to put up fans. But what they were talking about is putting fans on the actual work assignments. On the workers? Just on the workers, yeah. So they were smaller fans. OK, got it.
00:31:10
Speaker
Because airflow into the person, it helps accelerate the evaporation of sweat. So that's the plan they had used previously. That's what they were going to use. But then they were using passive air turnover by opening up
00:31:26
Speaker
overhead doors in the evening actually they kept them open all day and attempting to Open some overhead windows that don't always work and if it rains you got to close them because the water comes in and just two Dedicated exhaust fans that I wasn't actually able to
Effective Airflow Management
00:31:44
Speaker
test. I don't know how efficient they were and
00:31:48
Speaker
So just by walking around at different parts of the day, I could tell what areas were getting hot because there was heat producing equipment and which areas did not have a consistent air movement. And what I don't mean by a small fan, I mean the migration of air from outdoor to exiting out the roof.
00:32:12
Speaker
that's where hot air wants to go, right? It wants to exit the roof. But if you have a plant where you don't have a consistent or macro air migration to the point of exit, then that's an area that's just going to be kind of swirling in its own. And it's just gonna continue to heat up, especially if you have heat producing equipment, and you don't have anything to remove it. So I added that I put I asked to order. I think I my first round I got to
00:32:42
Speaker
Was it two or three big drum floor fans that could push, I believe, 15,000 to 18,000 CFM? And that's a lot. That's a lot of push. And so I basically put them in the overhead doors, but then lowered the overhead door to minimize the additional space. Because what you want is for every cubic foot of air that's pulled into the fan and injected into the work environment to come from outside.
00:33:10
Speaker
and not be leaking in from inside the building. And so I think I was starting to achieve that. And the more I placed those around, the more the workers said, we already feel a difference. So now the small fans they have that was just basically circulating the warm air that they're working in was starting to circulate the air that I was cooling. And that's what made the difference that and then I also created my own exhaust ventilation with a couple fans.
00:33:38
Speaker
and some ductwork and some boxes and duct tape, thank you duct tape, and was able to actually vent some compressed errors, air compressors, excuse me, and even block some other things that were introducing heat. So yeah, it's turning over air. It's it's actively or forcibly moving cooler air at the right time of day into the plant so we can force the hot air out through the top where it wants to go anyway.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, for some of us who haven't had an industrial ventilation course in 30 years, that'd be me, or maybe someone who has never had it, talk for a second about the difference between blowing air out, blowing air in,
00:34:22
Speaker
You know, the direction of airflow and what does, you know, like how that you apply as you, as, as you get into your duct tape and cardboard story. Yeah. So, um, I mean, you, you want, if you can localize, you know, where you're exhausting, I know some people like to use hoods. I like to use loose enclosures. I think they work better.
00:34:41
Speaker
And you'd need to draw out more air than is being produced by that piece of equipment and so that's where one of my designs was a little bit off because as the flexible ductwork went around a corner it it added a Pressure drop to the airflow. So therefore it wasn't as efficient But
00:35:05
Speaker
Okay, what was the question again? My brain just Yeah, the different but the difference between blowing air and bringing air in and, you know, mistakes with with that or you know, how how you effectively direct air, right? I mean, you can think of it as positive and negative pressure, air flows away from positive towards negative.
00:35:25
Speaker
Um, I mean, whenever I see like the weather reports of like the hurricanes and they show the eye, I'm like, Oh, that's where it's being forced a certain way. Um, it's so again, when we're talking about something like hot air, it, it wants to rise. And what you need to do is you need to get it to migrate to where it wants to go out. And I achieve that by adding air pressure to the building and the pressure of the building where the big drum fans
00:35:50
Speaker
that I put in the overhead doors that I lowered to force it. So now it was pressure. So you may think, oh, he's just pulling in, you know, cooler air. Well, it's a dual effect. I'm also making the exhaust fans that are up in the ceiling in one area of the plant more effective. And I wish I could have gotten up there with my volometer to test that and to show them. But I knew it was more effective just watching the temperature and the humidity gauges that I have throughout the plant.
00:36:17
Speaker
dropping at night when I position the fans in certain doors, pointing at certain ways. And then just to let you know, there was an advance where I was able to actually, I set up one of the big fans to pull some of the air from the hotter area. And that was one of the most effective things I think I built.
00:36:38
Speaker
Um, just simply because there was a compressor there, there was big electric equipment cabinets that were giving up heat. And what it did is it grabbed some of the cool air that was coming in adjacent to it and pulled it into that area, effectively making it that area more of a air turnover per hour.
00:36:55
Speaker
than before when he was more of a static heating up and just mixing. So that was a really cool thing. Now we did get some bids from some contractors to put in something more permanent. We're talking tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. These fans cost about 750 bucks a piece. Well talk about what you built with the cardboard and the duct tape and the flexible hose for a second.
00:37:17
Speaker
It was I built an enclosure over the exhaust port of a air compressor, and I did use my volometer to test that it was kicking out about 500 CFM of about 130 degree Fahrenheit air.
00:37:30
Speaker
That's just what the compressor was kicking out. So I enclosed it with a cardboard box, cut out a piece for the fan, and then ran ductwork out a door into one of the overhead doors. That same door where I ran that duct is where I put in one of the big drum fans, and then just filled it in with discarded cardboard. And so it had a very strong sort of sucking pull from that area to get it out.
00:37:55
Speaker
And so it's just been I mean, really, it's been phenomenal. When I started out not doing anything, I was lucky if that area would dip down to like 81 or 82 degrees Fahrenheit. After these changes, we're dipping down to like 75 76 degrees. That is a big difference to start the day at 7475 versus 81 or 82. Wonderful, wonderful. So you mentioned the word volometer a few times if that sounds like a new
00:38:22
Speaker
word for some people who are listening you want to talk about a volometer and Also when you're purchasing a fan, you know, what sort of CFM should we be looking for when we're doing things like this based on what you learn from your volometer? Yeah
00:38:37
Speaker
So a volometer, there's typically two different kinds. There's the propeller. So it looks like it has a fan blade in it. And then the air flowing across it, it measures the speed or estimates the speed. I got a hot wire anemometer, which the air velocity is measured by the temperature change felt across a heated wire.
00:39:02
Speaker
And it's just a way to estimate linear velocity. And then you just have to know the cross-sectional area of the space. And then you can calculate volumetric flow, such as the CFM, the cubic feet per minute. My volometer also had the ability to measure temperature. This was a very inexpensive purchase. I think it was only
00:39:24
Speaker
like 50 or $60 from Amazon. So it's not a permanent fix. And it's going to run out of calibration probably after a year. But it was good enough to get me through the summer. So that's what I used. Yeah. Oh, the fans. I shopped hard for those. And they go up in price the higher the CFM they move.
00:39:44
Speaker
Um, and they had a few bigger fans around the plant, but they were old, old design. The, the fins probably weren't kept up. They weren't cleaned out. So they weren't moving as much air. Um, so when I perch, you know, here's what you want. You'd like to have, you know, so many air changes per hour, you know, to move that that's the volume of air inside moved outside. But when you're circulating things, it's not perfect. Nothing's ever laminar. It's always turbulent and you're guessing at it.
00:40:12
Speaker
But I wanted something that was 15,000 CFM or more, because if you look at the square footage and you think of like a 10-foot, 20-foot ceiling, you could estimate how many times an hour you could turn over a particular floor, ceiling, volumetric space, given what that fan is capable of doing.
00:40:34
Speaker
There's a ventilation standard the OSHA has, and they want you to have six air changes per hour for a flammable liquid storage. That would be fantastic, but I was just hoping to get something around one or two per hour, because I'm not trying to remove something that's hazardous. I'm just trying to move cooler air from outdoors, pushing it inside, and then hoping the hot air inside would migrate and find its way out the highest part of the building.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, so Todd, let's back up for thank you for all of that. And let's back up to just a building's regular ventilation system they already have. And if you have if you live in a place where there's seasons,
00:41:18
Speaker
sometimes companies make changes to their ventilation based on the season with you know what you what they open vent wise close vent wise what gets turned on what stays on all that kind of business so if someone's thinking oh man I don't know if I'm at the level of taking out the cardboard and the duct tape and ripping apart a confined space kit to use the flexible host to build the thing like Todd did maybe I just want to make some adjustments
00:41:47
Speaker
What's existing where would they start when it starts getting hot? That's a really good question and I mean there everybody who is a building manager should already know the standards ashray Which is the the ventilation standard or standard group, but it's I think it's more consensus I also look at BOMA which is the building management group and I just searched it really quick and like I
00:42:13
Speaker
There's estimations of anywhere from, I've seen in here, four air changes per hour, five air changes per hour. When it hits summer and winter, you try to reduce the percent of outdoor air intake just to make sure that carbon dioxide levels are controlled or mitigated in some way, humidity as well. And again, depending on how much
00:42:38
Speaker
Indoor, you know, I should say percent outdoor air you're mixing in that system You have to pay to have it conditioned whether it's heating cooling Dehumidification or humidification if your system has that yeah Which is why they tend to close that down or reduce it during summer and winter months and then spring fall They can open them up more because they're not spending as much on the conditioning energy
00:43:04
Speaker
So it really, and the other thing that's interesting is usually when they design those original building ventilation systems or HVAC system, it goes through several different owners and they start putting up walls and they start storing things. And so now the system that was really originally designed to try to provide a balanced
00:43:24
Speaker
over, you know, turning over of air isn't doing it anymore. And so whenever I, you know, in my consulting job or pre going back to school, when I would get a complaint, I would go in and start assessing, you know, when's the last, you know, when were these walls or enclosures put in?
00:43:43
Speaker
And then you come to find out that, you know, what was supposed to be, you know, a duck that's supposed to just serve one diffuser is serving like three or four. And it's like, well, now you're not moving the air you're supposed to. So what you have to do is you have to
00:44:00
Speaker
create a balance and there are experts that you can hire that will go in and test the airflow at different places or the static air static pressure drop from different zones to other zones and then they can redesign it so it's more of a balanced delivery because that's what you want. Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
you know, you want you want there to be an optimal turning over of air in your rooms in each room, so that one carbon dioxide levels stay somewhat, you know, equal to what it is outside. But when you start talking like an industrial plant where you're producing
00:44:34
Speaker
airborne contaminants that need to be captured, if you can't capture them through a hood or an enclosure, you may have to, you know, figure out a more active way to get that stuff to release outdoors and not accumulate indoors. Yeah. Wonderful. So let's talk about human beings, because after all,
00:44:55
Speaker
All of these things you're doing are for the human beings that have to work in the heat.
Cooling Solutions for Workers
00:45:01
Speaker
And you've changed things with ventilation, you've educated people, you're monitoring the heat and the humidity, you've come up with essentially a policy on when you're going to take actions. What sort of things did you do for the health and comfort of the workers? Talk about that piece.
00:45:20
Speaker
Okay, so that was the, that was the kind of the final thing I figured out, especially when I found that even though I was utilizing this, you know, nighttime fan in the door technique, pretty soon that wasn't enough. And that's where I was trying to figure out when I could close doors, which workers are like, why are you closing the door? We need it open. I'm like, because it's just heating us at this point. But what I did is I decided if I can't cool the air,
00:45:49
Speaker
can I provide the workers with something cold on them that could help, you know, them keep their body cool. And what we decided is we'd use those cooling towels that have a wicking, you know, so it provides additional cooling feel. In addition to that, I want to bring them coolers of ice water that they could dunk these rags into and put on their neck. And so I thought, you know, it's a really low cost, you know, low risk thing to try. So on the first really hot day,
00:46:19
Speaker
They went and got me five coolers. I went and got the ice, filled it up with ice water, and I walked around with these cooling towels, and it became kind of a joke. It was like I was the pope, and I'd dunk it in there, and I'd put it over their neck, and I'd bless them. They thought it was funny. With cold water. Yeah. Right away, someone was like, I don't know if I want to try it. An ice water-soaked cooling towel.
00:46:40
Speaker
it feels so good, especially when it's really hot. And you could just see them go, oh, like shake, like, oh, that feels amazing. I'm like, I'm gonna keep this cooler here. So when you guys need to just dunk it in there. Of course, you get these people sweating on the towels, you dunk it in pretty soon, you just have ice cold sweat. So what they did is they started bringing cups over and dumping it over the cloth over a bucket. Just so you know, I don't want people to get grossed out. I didn't think of that right away. They're the one who came with me with the solution. That's fantastic.
00:47:06
Speaker
but between that and I started walking around with a cooler of like ice cold water and it was handing it to them and like remember one per hour or do you guys want a popsicle I had the electrolyte pops that meant so much to them
00:47:22
Speaker
that I would come around, check on them, make sure they're drinking, make sure they're doing their popsicles, reminding them what their symptoms are. If you're not feeling well, you got to go report it. We got to get you cooled down. I got a lot of props, a lot of street cred, as the kids say, the youth. And so what I did, I started dragging out the managers to do it with me.
00:47:45
Speaker
And then they started getting the street cred. And so it became something where I'm just trying to keep them cool, you know, because that's my job. But it became an exercise of employee engagement and showing management cares. And anybody who works in the safety field knows that that is worth its weight in platinum.
00:48:03
Speaker
And so that's what it started doing and that also had workers sharing more things with me beyond heat. And that's what I needed to then re prioritize what I'm working on when I'm not working on the heat and cooling. So if the exercise became a very valuable.
00:48:20
Speaker
well beyond keeping them resistant to heat related illness. But and I got to got to know them too and joke around with them and everybody kind of noticed that and it just it just kind of lift you know, they'd say
00:48:34
Speaker
a higher tide lifts all boats. That's what it kind of felt like. It put kind of everybody in a better mood. Whereas it could have gone the other way really bad if people are just sweating and dropping. It's, you know, that all of a sudden, nobody wants to work there. This was, hey, you know, this isn't too bad. And I'll take a break and I'll work. And, you know, the production numbers sure could have been better. But overall, I think we're in a better place than if we had done nothing. And so
00:49:03
Speaker
I star on my chest, Todd wins. And I know that you're saying that as a complete joke because you're not, you're not, you're not, I am saying that as a joke. Yes. Egomaniac for certain, but you did an excellent job humaning and the fact that you brought the managers alongside you to model what that could look like and how they could have that interaction from long after you're gone is wonderful.
00:49:30
Speaker
So, Ted, you talked about production numbers, so that'd be another thing,
Impact of Heat on Productivity
00:49:34
Speaker
right? So, I mean, you had a pretty grand experiment this summer, and maybe some of the people are listening are like, I did a grand experiment like that too, right? And know that you said, you know, you came up with all of these systems, essentially, and
00:49:50
Speaker
Now you have an idea of how would you measure production in a time of stress like this? What kind of things are you thinking about in your mind that people might be thinking about for themselves right now?
00:50:06
Speaker
That's an excellent question. So that's, and that's actually the, you know, article that I want to write and publish that the operations people I sit in two meetings per day, during the week, they know, you know, how many products they're producing, how many hours workers are at the machine, how many workers, how many hours they're not because a machine is down or being repaired.
00:50:30
Speaker
or that a product was inspected to phone to be, okay, this lot doesn't meet our quality standards, so we need to see what we can do. They have all that. And so what I'm going to do is compare all of their production numbers against, you know, the extremely hot versus the no worry of heat at all periods throughout the summer, and I'll come up with a comparison.
00:50:54
Speaker
these were the hot days, these were the hot days. Did the cost to produce the same number of widgets
00:51:05
Speaker
change between those two. What's the magnitude of that? Is it justified to purchase a million dollar cooling system? Or is it acceptable to keep people at the work environment but have them work only 30 minutes an hour? So there's going to be a cutoff point.
00:51:26
Speaker
And that's what I need to determine. I just haven't collected the data for that yet. But when I do, I'm going to publish it. And then everybody can kind of see what they can compare to their own work environments to figure out. Again, should we be investing $1 million, $2 million into air conditioning or HVAC equipment? Would we be able to reacquire that investment
00:51:54
Speaker
given an expectation on maximum efficiency with manufacturing. So that's what I'm working on, but I don't have the answer yet.
00:52:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I hope you do that. I have a feeling that people are going to be interested in reading that. To get back to engineering for just a bit and the things that you tried, two questions for you. You mentioned one data point of you were able to lower the temperature, especially around that compressor room, by a certain number of degrees.
00:52:30
Speaker
What other decreases did you see overall in the plan, you know, temperature wise overall, or did that really just kind of depend on the day? And yeah, I was very dependent on the meteorological conditions. Even an overnight breeze from a certain direction, I could achieve maybe double digit cooling.
00:52:49
Speaker
And of course, during nighttime hours, when the temperature goes down, the humidity goes up. But when you have heat producing equipment in the plant, that happens to remove humidity. So it was a balance. It was really only during the extreme heat warning days did I not have the ability to keep the humidity levels to a comfortable level. They did get into the 70s and 80s.
00:53:15
Speaker
the lesson learned after all of that was, you know, next summer, when you have potentially, you know, weather in the 90s, and humidity in the upper 70s into the 80s, you're gonna have to prepare because you're gonna go through the same thing we went through, I won't be here. So you got to decide how you want to run this. And hopefully my numbers
00:53:37
Speaker
will will kind of shell out as far as is it is it more economical to shut everything down and just kind of try to maintain a cool temperature in the plant with everything shut up and everybody stays home and they come in when it cools off? Or are we gonna battle it?
00:53:53
Speaker
you know, and so are they gonna battle it again, it's not gonna be my responsibility here from now. So but I will give them everything they need as far as what is the best investment for money to do that stuff. But of course, no matter what they do, they need to make sure they're demonstrating to the workers, hey, we're doing this for you.
00:54:11
Speaker
Yeah. And if, if someone listening wants to engage with an engineer to do some of the things that you did or tried, you mentioned one resource would be HVAC companies who can, who can do some assessments maybe make some changes.
00:54:26
Speaker
if they want to go a little bit further than that, maybe they have an engineering team or they want to reach out to someone else, what sort of qualifications or information would that sort of person need to be able to the PE license?
Engaging Engineers for Better Ventilation
00:54:40
Speaker
I mean, my, my, I mean, a PE license, you know, professional engineer is designated for a particular discipline in which you did your studies. My studies when I
00:54:52
Speaker
received or earned my license was chemical engineering with a focus with a focus on environmental engineering. So I took a, a wide range of coursework for my emphasis, you know, in like, dispersion modeling in underwater, underwater systems, air pollution control, epidemiological hazardous waste. So
00:55:17
Speaker
I had a very wide range and of course I took a ventilation course. And I just have always been fascinated by it. It's one of those things that interests me. I practice it on my own home. But they would want someone who's a PE who has the experience with different forms of ventilation design. And I say that because the company I work for, they do have contractors they work with a lot who have actually designed some of the exhaust systems that are not functioning well.
00:55:46
Speaker
And as soon as the first day I walked in, I'm like, that's not effective. And I can smell it way over here. So obviously, it's not working. And so yeah, you definitely need someone who has the PE and the background to design a new system. But you also probably want someone who maybe has their CIH in order to use a volometer to test the effectiveness of current exhaust systems or pressure differentials, things like that.
00:56:13
Speaker
Well, you certainly worked through every piece of the hierarchy of controls this summer with this particular couple of sleepless nights there where I was doing temperature and humidity and heat load trending and forecasting at like two and three in the morning so that I could call my boss and let her know what I thought things were gonna be at six in the morning, which is when our first shift starts.
00:56:37
Speaker
Yeah, this summer couldn't get over soon enough. But again, I am looking forward to reviewing and comparing my data against the production data. And maybe I can help others, you know, make the decision on what to do because we really made a minimal investment financially. And I think we cut out a lot more than what we had expected. But I, you know, I wouldn't know if other people could achieve that same thing. It was
00:57:05
Speaker
A bit of the old Todd luck, I think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so short of having a crystal ball to know, you know, what OSHA is going to do and are they going to promulgate a regulation that might give us some greater guidance. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience or resources.
00:57:25
Speaker
that you can think of, that you think people might be. Well, I'll just review the four that I had mentioned. As far as getting data is how heat stress affects the body and getting recommendations for what to do to mitigate those factors, NIOSH and CDC, you know, top of the line there. OSHA has a lot of great information, a lot of similar things that what CDC and NIOSH have.
00:57:49
Speaker
Now if you want to look at the ventilation experts, ASHRAE is the society that really sets the standards on things. And then you can also look to BOMA, which is the building management group. They also have a lot of guidance documents.
00:58:04
Speaker
on how to assess the performance of your HVAC system and also, you know, when things should be tweaked. So, you know, that and actually, you know, collecting data. That's how I that I and I'm almost positive. That's how I was successful. That's how I gain management support for my recommendations. I have the data.
00:58:27
Speaker
I knew, you know, I could estimate and I was testing myself on modeling of temperature and humidity and heat index in the plant. And then I compared it to the research and said, you know, under these conditions, this is what we're going to be most concerned, but this is what we're going to do to to challenge it to try to mitigate it. And I could report to them, you know,
00:58:47
Speaker
okay at this time of day this is what the temperature was this is how this is when it broke the threshold it's gonna continue to you know break a certain threshold as we go through today i suspect by eleven o'clock it's gonna reach a certain thing so we are making decision making before things got bad. And i think that is probably. The most difficult thing.
00:59:08
Speaker
You know, even when I'm saying, yeah, I think this is what we need to do. And there was some pushback. I'm just like, uh-oh. Did I just overstep my expertise? But it was the right thing to do. Yeah, it all worked out.
00:59:25
Speaker
The estimations, the forecasting, the modeling I was doing, it all came to fruition. I was pretty close on everything I was guessing at. And no, not guessing, estimating. And yeah, we did the right thing. And yeah, I hope that when I see the actual language of the standard that everything that I did this summer would still meet what they're asking other companies to do.
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah, and you didn't lose anyone on your
Community Engagement and Seasonal Challenges
00:59:51
Speaker
watch. And, you know, when you're listening to this episode, if you did something similar to what Todd did, let us know. You can certainly talk to us over LinkedIn when we share the episode. Let us know how things went for you this summer. What sort of things did you discover? What did you learn?
01:00:10
Speaker
And the heat isn't over for many parts of the country. You know, you and I, Todd, have the great benefit of having winter coming soon, where workers will be dealing with a different extreme. But for those of you who are still in the midst of it, let us know what's working for you.
01:00:32
Speaker
And don't forget about the OSHA's request to submit for comment on the proposed regulation. So the industries that they're specifically asking to comment and read the read the text and comment is
01:00:48
Speaker
the agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry, building and material suppliers, commercial kitchens, construction and telecommunications and utilities, dry cleaners, Todd mentioned those earlier, and commercial laundry, fire protection, landscaping, facility support, maintenance, and repair, manufacturing, material handling, transportation, warehousing, oil and gas,
01:01:12
Speaker
recreation and amusement and waste management. All of that makes sense. So if you're working in support of any of those industries, check out the ways that you can comment on the regulation at regulations.gov. Todd, final thoughts before we close this out?
01:01:33
Speaker
I just want to go back to the original thing I talked about. It's not just about an individual's inability to coper or adapt to, you know, it's their environment to keep their body regulated temperature wise. It's what it does to your brain. And that's what I experienced
01:01:53
Speaker
When I went through a heat related illness event, that I could see how it would cause people to accidentally get them self exposed to something else secondary to heat, make a decision that seems a little bit off to act erratic.
01:02:13
Speaker
And so just keep that in mind. It's not just the heat related illness. It's the state it puts the individuals in that puts them at a higher risk or propensity to possibly get injured. So we have to keep all that in mind. Well, my friend, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Again, appreciate your wisdom as always. Thank you. It was very cool.
01:02:42
Speaker
I thought it was hot. This has been a heated conversation, Todd. Oh, wonderful. All right. Thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human wellbeing, which is the core of our practice.
01:03:04
Speaker
If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like Todd and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.