Page 9 - North American Clean Energy July/August 2020 Issue

important that worker’s heat risk be minimized with these new and innovative continuous physiological monitoring devices. And while heat stress is a stealthy and unseen enemy with deadly potential, monitoring and preventing heat related injuries and illnesses in the clean energy sector can increase production, reduce costs, and save lives.
Heidi E. Lehmann is Chief Commercial Officer at Kenzen, a smart PPE innovator focused on physiological monitoring and the prevention of heat injury and death among workers.
Kenzen /// www.kenzen.com
event at $179 million. Moreover, these impacts are fully preventable, since the risk of heat injuries and illnesses can be easily monitored by measuring each individual’s physiological responses.
New technological trends in heat safety that provide continuous, private monitoring of individual workers, can mitigate heat-related health risks and save companies money. The advent
of technology that monitors key physiological indicators means that
there is hope for new ways to prevent and predict individual worker heat stress in the clean energy sector. Before this type of Smart PPE, companies simply looked at accidents after the fact, with little ability to predict elevated risk for individual workers. Now, new technology enables safety managers to both predict and prevent near-misses. Devices are often smaller than a cell phone and easy to wear, with no discomfort to the user. Users can review individual worker- athlete leading indicators such as heart rate, core body temperature, and sweat loss. And dashboards for each worksite team keep management informed, while maintaining individual worker privacy.
Because individual monitoring is private (with data de-identified at the management level) workers have their own window into their personal health indicators, and can pull themselves
away from heat risk as needed. This is especially important for those working in difficult-to-reach locations like turbines and rooftops. Better than temperature guns, which create an immediate lack of privacy when admitting workers to the site, continuous monitoring is covert and reduces worker check-in time. If
an indicator warrants intervention, management can simply speak with
the worker without alerting others to
the concern. Additionally, rather than reviewing a heat stress injury after it occurs, continuous monitoring allows users to predict and prevent the incident – keeping workers safer and more fit
for duty, while increasing output and lowering health care expenses.
Reduced worker safety, lower productivity, and unnecessary costs are all easily preventable with improved individual monitoring of core body temperature. As increasing temperatures continue across the globe, it’s even more
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