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Combating heat illness in the workplace
13 Plays4 months ago
In the latest episode of the Feed & Grain Podcast, Steven Kilger and Joe Mlynek from Safety Made Simple discuss the critical issue of heat illness prevention during the summer. They cover the dangers of working in high temperatures, necessary precautions for employees and companies, and strategies to ensure everyone stays safe. Listen to the episode for valuable insights on protecting workers in extreme heat.
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Transcript
Introduction to Feeding Grain Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Stephen Kilgour and I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain magazine and host to the Feeding Grain podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries. Today's episode is brought to you by the Binwip from Numat Systems. The powerful tool impact Binwip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry. Learn more today at binwip.com.
Guest Introduction: Joe Milnick
00:00:33
Speaker
In today's episode, my guest, Joe Milnick, content creation expert and partner at Safety Made Simple is here to talk about incredibly important topic, especially with the summer we have here in the United States, heat illness prevention. We discuss the dangers of working in hot conditions, what employees and companies should do when it's hot out, and of course tips to make sure everyone goes home safe at the end of the day.
00:00:56
Speaker
I hope you enjoy the interview. If you want to help out with the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. If you're listening online, sign up for the Feeding Grain newsletter industry watch to see the newest podcast drop and stay up to date with all the latest news from around the industry. Thank you so much for listening and on to the show. Hi, Joe. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity as much. And I think this is the third time I've been on with you. I always enjoy the conversation.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, you're one of our favorites. It's always really nice to have you on. Well, we were talking a little beforehand and you're so knowledgeable about all this stuff and Safety Made Simple does such a great job with your programs. It's always kind of nice to be able to give people a solution to the problem we're talking
Joe Milnick's Career Journey
00:01:39
Speaker
about. Can you tell us, for people who might not listen to your previous episodes, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about Safety Made Simple and its mission, what it does?
00:01:48
Speaker
Sure. I started my career in safety in 1996. I actually started in the auto industry, which is not even close to the ag world. Shortly afterward, I'd worked in the auto industry for three years. I worked for a large agribusiness company for 10 years in corporate safety. And I learned much of what I know about particularly the grain and feed industry from working at that company.
00:02:15
Speaker
In 2009, I decided to try my hand at consulting. So I started progressive safety services and primarily what we provide is program development, training, inspections, and those types of services. I spend about, I don't know, nowadays maybe 30, 40% of my time doing that and the rest that safety made simple. I joined safety made simple in 2014.
00:02:42
Speaker
I actually, Chuck Piri, the founder, and I ran across each other while we were doing some consulting. He's a safety professional as well. And he said, you know, I'd be interested in having you develop some online training courses. We feel there's some real opportunity in the ag sector, particularly with grain. And I said, well, that's right up my alley. So we started to develop courses in 2014, focusing on grain and we've expanded there.
Mission of Safety Made Simple
00:03:05
Speaker
I became a part at Safety Made Simple in 2017. We are an online training provider in the ag industry.
00:03:13
Speaker
We focus primarily on ag-specific content. We've been serving the ag industry for a little over 10 years. We've got about 165 courses, a lot of different areas, you know, ag safety, including grain, livestock, cattle feeding, general safety, construction safety, DOT, driver safety, food safety. We get into equipment maintenance and human resources as well, and I might have forgotten
00:03:43
Speaker
is when you look at the offering itself. So we work a lot with grain elevators, co-ops, private grain companies, agronomy centers, big in the cattle feeding industry. We've got partners that are flour mills, feed mills, biofuel facilities.
00:03:59
Speaker
even construction companies as well. So we offer our courses within our learning management system at Safety Made Simple, but also many of our partners have their own learning management system so they can we can kind of plug in our courses and an existing learning management system maybe that they are. As far as our mission, it's pretty simple just like our name. Most of the people that I work with, particularly on the the content side of building courses are safety
00:04:27
Speaker
myself and Chuck Piri, my partner, being both safety professionals, we really understand the impact that serious injuries and even fatalities can have on people, families, communities, companies. And our mission is to send people home safely, just pure and simple. Well, yeah, I mean, it's hard when you see those stories out
Impact of Extreme Heat on Safety
00:04:50
Speaker
there and things. It always seems like a statistic until it happens at your facility and you have to have that conversation with someone's family.
00:04:57
Speaker
then it becomes a very different thing. Yes. It's interesting, Steve, because when you mention statistics, we often look at these numbers and don't realize that there's a person, that that number represents a person. And in some instances, I'm going to be at convey in July to talk about a fatality during my career, and to see that number reported from OSHA, how many fatalities were that year, and I knew that I knew one of them.
00:05:27
Speaker
personally. And a lot of times we look at these numbers and that escapes us that there's a person behind that. And I always feel that as a person deals with this news on a daily basis. I mean, it's my job, right, to find out and report on this stuff. And in a way you have to kind of take yourself out of it, but still you look at some of these stories and it's a tragedy every time.
00:05:52
Speaker
Well, what we have you here for today, though, is it's hot. I don't know about what it's like where you are, but here in southern Wisconsin, it has been a scorcher of summer so far. And we thought it would be a good time to kind of talk about extreme heat.
00:06:08
Speaker
How can it impact the workplace? How to keep everyone safe when it's hot out? Best practices and what you can kind of do with that sort of thing. Can you explain a little bit about just what extreme heat can do to productivity, efficiency, and of course, like some of the dangers behind it? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. That's a question that I don't think we draw the parallel with heat safety is the productivity piece.
00:06:37
Speaker
a connection with heat related illnesses and productivity. When you think about Hot Day, I'm actually located in Ohio, but we had two weeks ago, we cooled down a little bit, but we were 90 plus every day. And just being, I was out on a construction site last week and it was in the upper 90s, just, you know,
00:06:56
Speaker
We move slower, things take longer, but it really beats the alternative. And the alternative is you have somebody that has a heat illness, which can include something like a heat stroke. I worked for a grain company years ago as a consultant, and they had a contractor that died of heat stroke after a long hot day in Louisiana. And that's the alternative. So, you know, we're going to talk about prevention strategies today, and that's really important.
00:07:20
Speaker
But on the productivity side, this loss of efficiency and productivity, there's studies out there that indicate that this will cost US businesses $100 billion annually, and they expect that to increase two to threefold over the next five to 10 years. When you think about productivity, like, well, how does it affect? Well, obviously, we're more working slow.
00:07:44
Speaker
it takes a little bit longer, that kind of thing. But I had a client in a southern climate, it's probably been a year or two, and I was doing an inspection at the facility. Brand new employee, I usually start at the top of the Grand Elevator and work my way down. It's just kind of the way I do it. When I got down into the tunnels, there was a guy working down there.
00:08:02
Speaker
And he was a new employee. I think maybe his first week on the job, maybe even first couple of days, it's warm down there, but not as warm as it is outside. I would usually, I would think, Hey, you know, you want guys cleaning basements, tunnels and hot weather. It's probably the coolest place in the facility. He was working pretty hard. I can tell that I didn't see anything abnormal. About two hours later, as I'm walking to the office to just finish up, he's on his back with a bunch of employees around him. They've called 911.
00:08:28
Speaker
He's in pretty bad shape, almost like he turned white, almost having difficulty breathing. He's panicking a little bit and we're trying to cool him down. You know, those guys are getting them wet towels and all that kind of thing. And he's, you know, they come and take him to the hospital. He ends up being okay. He's got heat exhaustion. But you think about that. I mean, now you have one
Symptoms of Heat-Related Illnesses
00:08:50
Speaker
employee that was sent to the hospital, you have a lot of
00:08:58
Speaker
meeting to talk about the importance of hydrating and taking breaks and all those types of things. And on top of it, they're down to worker for a few days. So you can easily see why that would affect productivity at a facility level.
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, and as someone who's gotten sick from the heat before, it sneaks up on you. Suddenly you're like, I'm hot. I'm uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable. And then suddenly you're there. So you mentioned heat stroke. Are there any other kind of health risks that employees might face when exposed to high temperatures? In my mind, I think of
00:09:32
Speaker
Even if it's not heat related, just the fact working in hot conditions makes you really distracted. I imagine you were just not, it was so hard to be fully focused on your job when you are warm and you are uncomfortable. Yeah, it's funny you say that even as a safety person that does a lot of inspections out in the field, I'll tell you when it's super cold and it's super
00:09:54
Speaker
when I'm comfortable. And it's just reality. So when you think about there's really four main types of heat illnesses out there. Heat cramps being one of them. If you've ever played athletics or anything like that, hot summer days, athletes, that kind of thing. I used to have a problem when I was in high school, I'd cramp up in the legs, that kind of stuff in the summer during two days of football, that kind of stuff. Wasn't adequately hydrated at the time. It was extremely hot. And back then in the late 80s, early 90s, we just
00:10:24
Speaker
through all this stuff that is as knowledgeable as we are today about some of these illnesses so you got heat cramps you know there's heat rash and that's just generally triggered by sweating excessive sweating and you get
00:10:39
Speaker
which results from you really losing a lot of water through and it's all through excessive sweating. So I think most people have experienced heat exhaustion and it's probably been the headache piece of it. I had probably a mild case of heat exhaustion.
00:10:54
Speaker
at a Royals game years ago. I was in Kansas City for a safety made simple we were having a meeting so we took the whole team out to the game and it's 98 degrees with you know 89% humidity and here's a guy from up north you know we just don't get that warm occasionally and I'm down there and
00:11:11
Speaker
they seem to be doing okay. And I am sweating like crazy and I'm drinking water. And I remember on the ride home, I'm like, man, I have a headache. So I got back to the room and kind of rehydrated, rested a little bit, cooled down and ended up being okay. But those are the things that can really spiral out of control if you don't catch them or understand what the symptoms are. So we have heat exhaustion. And then the one that we are most concerned about the most serious thing is heat stroke and that can kill you.
00:11:37
Speaker
And that's really when your body can't regulate temperature anymore. You actually stop sweating and your body will, you reach above your temp around 104 or more. That's when that body really doesn't, it just kind of almost freezes, doesn't sweat, doesn't address it. And that can be really dangerous and that can actually kill people. You say being from the North, I feel you completely because when I visit down there in the South during the summer, you visit a feed mill or a grain elevator or something and you go there and you
00:12:22
Speaker
years ago, I had back-to-back consulting weeks. I was in Dallas, Fort Worth one week, and it was July. And it's 97 degrees with, I don't know, the humidity is like 80, 90%. I mean, you walk out to your car at 6 a.m. and you're like being from Ohio. I'm like, whoa, man, this is crazy. It was a tough day. And then the next week I'm up in Idaho and I fly into Boise and I'm working up there in that area. And you got a hundred degree day, but you have no humidity.
00:12:31
Speaker
you talk to them and they're fine walking around, but there's me just getting ready to die in my butt now shirt.
00:12:50
Speaker
You still have to make sure you're hydrating. You don't really sweat, it just evaporates so quickly. But it almost feels so much more comfortable. But it's still hot and you kind of forget about it. You dry out very quickly. I noticed that when I was there.
00:13:05
Speaker
Well, especially there's like a certain mode where you start to get sick and the last thing you want to do is put something into your body. No, that's the time you need to be hydrating. Are there any specific signs or symptoms that people can be on the lookout for? You know, you're working with a guy, you see him doing these things and then maybe he can be like, Hey, let's, let's take a break.
Preventing Heat Illnesses
00:13:23
Speaker
It's dressed up.
00:13:24
Speaker
before things get too far. Any of the audience ever has listened to the webinars that I've provided for maybe like a grain journal or NGFA. One of the things that I like to focus on is that it's important. We did a webinar with NGFA last week where we talked about hazardous atmospheres and
00:13:46
Speaker
gases and what the symptoms of exposure are. And like heat illnesses, I think it's important for employees to understand what these symptoms are because then they can identify them in themselves and others. Just like when I went to the Royals game, I knew that the headache was due to probably dehydration and heat exhaustion.
00:14:06
Speaker
So I knew to drink water and get in a cool spot and rest for a while and that was fine. So if you can recognize those types of things in yourself and others, you can actually do something about it. So when you look at those symptoms, obviously things like heat cramps, that's a symptom, right? Heat rash, that's a symptom. Heat exhaustion can be headache, nausea. People will get dizzy. They'll be really sweating heavily like I was at the Royals game. Extreme thirst, just you can't drink enough water.
00:14:34
Speaker
really the serious one as I mentioned earlier heat stroke you'll start to see people they'll become confused some of them will lose consciousness seizures those are really violent reactions and you'll also see them that they're so warm like I mentioned earlier that they'll actually stop sweating so those are the things to be
00:14:57
Speaker
working at a grain elevator or a feed facility. Like I mentioned earlier, it's not just workers outside. This can happen inside. You know, the example I used was a guy working in a tunnel where I thought like, that's not the hottest of places, probably a decent place to be working during the day, but he still had heat exhaustion. Yeah. Well, we can forget like how stuffy and humid it can get inside, right? Like it's just... Yeah, the air flow and that kind of thing. Absolutely.
00:15:24
Speaker
It seems so important. Well, I mean, we should all be looking out for our coworkers and each other and ourselves and heat illness and things seems like it kind of catches. Well, like you said earlier, people want to power through it, right? It's kind of still thought in that category of like, Oh, don't be like a weird week a guy who can't work in 94 degree weather in the human unit. So there's still kind of that stigma behind it, which is really dangerous. You know, something can actually kill you if you don't address it right away.
00:15:55
Speaker
Exactly. I work in an industry that's how it's called like can do, will do kind of thing. We were pretty tough. And sometimes I think taking a break has looked at weakness and all that. I think we need to get past that point of it. And I think we're moving in that direction.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, especially if you're in, I mean, we work in a high, well, I don't, the people we talk to every day, we work in a very high stakes, high pressure thing where stuff's moving fast and when you need to get stuff done, it needs to get done quickly. You know, you need to get that train. You need to get that truck unloaded. You need to get that batch made. Um, so yeah, it can be hard to kind of take that break. Are there things that employers can do, effective strategies that they can do to kind of keep their workers safe and healthy during this?
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, there are a lot of things they can do. I'm happy to report that I've seen them doing this and taking this really seriously. And there's been a lot of efforts, particularly like through NGFA to really promote having a heat illness prevention program and those types of things. So having
00:16:59
Speaker
around this and OSHA has a national emphasis program on heat illnesses. And so they're stopping at work sites when it's hot out and checking to see if there's water and just having a plan right up front. There are some states like California and there are some other state plan states that run their own OSHA that require this. So I just think having a plan like what's the trigger, it feels like temperature of 80 degrees or whatever it might be. And then what are we going to do? If it gets to an extreme 90 plus, what are we going to do at that point?
00:17:29
Speaker
So it's really having that program in place. And just the other piece is monitoring the temperature and the weather and the employees as well. So I was just knowing I was going to come on and talk to you today, Steve. I was, I have the app on my phone, but I haven't used it lately. There's an OSHA heat safety tool app that gives you the feel like temperature in your area. I asked for permission to kind of track where you're at and know your location.
00:17:55
Speaker
And you can pull that up and it'll tell you whether or not it feels like temperature is. So anything above 80 now is considered something where some action should be taken. So that just calculates the heat index.
00:18:10
Speaker
I think as an employer, at the very least, if you just follow the talent of water rush aid, if you don't have a formal program, that that's an important thing to do. But there's a number of other strategies people can use. So all new and existing employees should be able to acclimate to weather changes like that. And you think about like, so new employees, maybe they came from, they're not working in an industry
00:18:35
Speaker
They worked at an air conditioned environment like you and I do on a lot of days. We're fortunate, right? They came from that and now they're working out in this facility and it's 90 plus degrees with really high humidity. That's a shock to the system. So how do we slowly introduce them into the workplace? You talk about existing employees. So being located in Ohio, our June's are usually we're 78 degrees, 80 degrees, but last week we were 90, 95, close to a hundred. Most of the week with pretty high humidity.
00:19:11
Speaker
was a lot different than what we saw two weeks ago. We had our furnaces that morning, that kind of thing. So really that just being able to acclimate to the heat, I think the postponing non-essential outdoor work, if you can do that, to reduce the times when the heat index is a little bit lower, scheduling, physically demanding stuff for cooler periods of the day. Can we do that really early in the morning or evening if we're working in the evening, that kind of thing.
00:19:32
Speaker
That's a drastic change for any, even the people that work outside.
00:19:37
Speaker
Obviously the additional breaks on days when there's a high heat index. Most facilities now I think have air conditioned place where people can rest that kind of thing. Another one that people I sometimes I don't know if they think about but the use of like the
00:19:54
Speaker
important anytime you're working in a hazardous environment. If I were working at heights, I wouldn't want to work alone in case I foul that I'm hanging from a harness. Somebody needs to be able to get help to me, right? Or help me rescue, you know, that piece of it. So I think not working alone, having a buddy system, or at the very least, if that's not feasible, making sure everybody has a radio and we just check on them every now and then.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah. Cause like we said, like it's very hard when you're in the moment when you're suffering from, well, especially like heat stroke. You're delirious at that point. There's something you can't really make rational decisions to save yourself. Having that other person there is extremely important.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, the employee that I was talking about earlier, the example, he was working with somebody else and they helped him get up to the work floor and get help from there. So he was lucky. I mean, if that gets worse, we don't know if he loses consciousness or something and how long he's going to be in that location without anybody even checking out. So I think that's important. The other piece is hydration. So I think it's important as well
00:20:58
Speaker
anybody to understand how to hydrate. So in these extreme heat times, we really need to have the rule of thumbs like eight ounces of water, like every 15 to 20 minutes. And drinking in these shorter intervals is really better than waiting an hour or two and then chugging down 36 ounces of water. They can only absorb it so fast.
00:21:21
Speaker
Exactly. And then too much water at times isn't good either. So water really is the best thing. Sports drinks aren't bad because they do replace electrolytes or salts. But obviously, you know, I get into complications. I'm seeing guys chugging all these.
00:21:36
Speaker
energy drinks and stuff with caffeine and just like alcohol outside of work, that those are diuretics. So you're going to be shedding water rather than keeping it in your body. So it's just important to make sure, I think as well, the other thing we forget is like when we get home at night, hydrate at night to get ready for the next day. And then, you know, the last thing Steve wants to say is just, you know, get trained workers. That's, that's really important so that they understand like we talked about these symptoms and then these strategies, you know, what can you do to help yourself throughout the day?
00:22:05
Speaker
Well, and it's been longer how to brouts for a while now, every summer seems to be the hottest one on record. So it's going to be more and more common. So best time to figure this out is now. Uh, speaking of getting some training in and stuff, it's obviously something safety made simple can help with with your online courses.
Training and OSHA Standards
00:22:24
Speaker
What specific kind of topics do you think might be good for management facilities who are thinking about getting some training for their employees for heat readiness?
00:22:35
Speaker
We offer a couple courses, but one specifically on heat illness prevention. I was actually the subject matter expert for it. When I put it together, I think the course is probably about two years old. I really looked at California because they have a heat illness prevention standard there.
00:22:51
Speaker
And they're the strictest. I expect when the federal OSHA at some point here is going to release a ketones prevention standard, I think that's, in my opinion, that's going to happen. That it's going to be based off of that California standard. So when I looked at the California standard, I focused on, okay, what are the training requirements? What do they want employees to know? And really what it got into was, and we put the course together, they want them to recognize the warning signs and symptoms, the stuff that we talked about today.
00:23:21
Speaker
the types of heat illnesses. We talked about the four types today, what employees can do in the event of an emergency. And we also in our course, we cover probably a little over 10 or more strategies of what not only employees can do, but if you're a supervisor and a manager. And that's kind of what our program focuses on is the
00:23:45
Speaker
If you witness something or somebody with a heat illness, what do you do in each one of those situations? There are courses available in Spanish because we do have our partners, particularly in the southern states, have a lot of Spanish speaking workers, but we include testing and those types of things as well. Yeah, plus you guys do, I mean, you do get courses on so many different topics. Like you said, you're up to 160 now. You're adding new ones all the time. Anything else exciting that people might want to take a look at?
00:24:14
Speaker
We add a new course every month and we also update an existing course. And when we update a course that's existing, it's actually an entirely new course. It's not just going in and changing a couple of pictures or the animations we use or interactivity. It's completely, we've got a lot of good ones coming up. I will tell you that the one we've been getting a lot of interest in just a couple of months ago, we released a course on OSHA's grain handling standard. And I was a subject matter expert on that one as well.
00:24:41
Speaker
And we really focused on the performance goals within the grain handling standards from OSHA.
00:24:46
Speaker
What I find as a consultant is, and I don't expect supervisors or managers to read the grant handling standard and all those types of things, but I think they need to understand that there are some requirements out there from the federal government or even the state. And they also, a lot of times, will correspond with their company's requirements. So they say, oh, okay, that's why we have to do that or that's why we do that. So we did a nice course, again, they're 20 minutes long, that gives a nice overview of all the
00:25:15
Speaker
show requirements for the drain handling standard. Yeah. Well, that's amazing. I encourage everyone to check it out.
Episode Conclusion and Future Topics
00:25:23
Speaker
There'll be a link to safety made simple's website down in the description of this and in the on the website and the transcript and everything like that. But thank you so much for coming to talk to me today, Joe. Oh, thank you, Steve. Appreciate the opportunity. Of course, we'll have to have you on again. Harvest is coming up, so it'll be time to review some safety tips then.
00:25:45
Speaker
All right, awesome. Well until next time everyone stay safe out there