To keep workers going in the heat, companies try fledgling cooling tech

published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics concluded that occupational injury data from California — a state used as a stand-in for federal measurements — may undercount heat-induced injuries by a fivefold margin.

So Seavers tallied the investments he made to keep workers safe in the desert heat and distributed the list to the customers who raised concerns. DPR Construction, a general contractor with worksites across the Sun Belt, distributes cooling caps and neck towels that can be dunked in water for evaporative cooling. During breaks, supervisors hand out electrolyte ice pops. But in the Southeastern United States, DPR worksites have started moving away from those items in favor of longer, better rest periods, said Lance Wafler, who leads the company’s field operations in the region.

These interventions are supposed to interrupt the effects of heat, said Margaret Morrissey-Basler, an assistant professor of health sciences at Providence College. They’re designed to work by keeping the body cool enough that natural heat reactions don’t kick in, or start at a higher temperature. Young Ko, a mechanical engineering PhD student at MIT, developed a cooling wrap that in tests reduced skin temperature by 50 degrees Fahrenheit in dry conditions.

Chicas noted that her sample of 84 workers was too small to draw definitive conclusions. But it was an encouraging start to more research, she said.When your body gets hot, hundreds of thousands of years of physiology kick in to cool you down. “Then you’re really screwed because now you’re not cooling,” said Moseley, who is also an intensive-care physician.Our bodies also adjust to regular high heat exposure in a process called acclimatization, which experts say can take about a week. Effective acclimatization yields cell-level changes that help us retain fluids and keep core temperature low. For example, Moseley said, a heat-acclimated body sweats at a cooler temperature — essentially leaving your internal air conditioner on.

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