Podcast: Managing heat stress on the factory floor—Best practices for worker safety

Key takeaways

Heat stress is the top weather-related workplace killer—hydration and rest breaks are essential.
Training workers to recognize heat stress signs can prevent serious on-the-job incidents.
Wearables and cooling tech offer new ways to detect and reduce heat-related risks.
Rising grid demand from heat, EVs, and data centers requires urgent infrastructure investment.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Robert Schoenberger, editor-in-chief of IndustryWeek, is joined by Dave Blanchard, editor-in-chief of EHS Today, and Jeff Postelwait, managing editor of T&D World, to discuss how extreme summer heat is affecting manufacturing operations and infrastructure. The conversation explores workplace safety concerns related to heat stress, emerging OSHA guidelines, and practical steps companies can take to protect employees. The discussion also delves into the growing strain on the power grid, rising electricity demand, and how utilities and manufacturers are responding to these challenges. As temperatures rise and electrification accelerates, the episode highlights the urgent need for both common-sense solutions and long-term investment.

Below is an edited excerpt from the podcast:

IW: It’s dangerous to have workers in an enclosed space, working with heavy machinery that can generate its own heat, when the heat outside is this high. What can companies do to keep people safe at times like this?

DB: Yeah. Thanks, Robert. The thing about heat is—it’s summertime. It’s always going to get hot. But it just keeps getting hotter and hotter, and the situation doesn't seem to be cooling off. As they say, when the temperature starts to spike—which, you know, it’s going to do when summer hits—it’s important to be vigilant.

Number one thing is to be aware of what heat stress is and how to protect yourself and your workers. People are usually pretty good at making sure a dog in a hot car is taken care of—they’ll say, “Oh, you’ve got to crack the windows or keep them out of the sun.” But they’re not always as proactive about themselves.

According to OSHA, which tracks these kinds of things for the workplace, heat stress or heat exposure is the number one cause of death among all hazardous weather conditions in the United States. So, it’s a big deal. It’s something to be concerned about.

That’s particularly important, as you mentioned, for anybody who works outside—construction workers, agricultural workers, or even people on an oil and gas platform. It's important for anyone in any kind of facility, especially if it's hot and poorly ventilated inside.

So, what is heat stress? Let’s go through that real quick. Common signs include heavy sweating, fever, dry hot skin, feeling faint or dizzy, lethargy, reduced appetite, irritability—though irritability can be interpreted in a lot of ways—and decreased urine output. In more intense cases, you might see twitching or painful muscle cramps in the arms, legs, or abdomen, and, of course, thirst. The best way to deal with that? Drink more water. Pretty logical. There are a number of recommendations. I think what I saw was that workers should drink one cup of water every 20 minutes or so.

Now, we live in a very heavily politicized environment. I guess it’s always been that way, but you’d think worker safety wouldn’t be something up for debate. Well, that’s not the case. Everything gets debated these days.

OSHA actually has a heat standard—they haven’t passed it yet, but they’ve proposed it. That came toward the end of the Biden administration. When the administration changed, things kind of went static. So now there are public hearings being held on OSHA’s Heat Injury and Illness Prevention Rule. That’s ongoing, and I think it’ll continue into early July. Whether it gets passed into a standard—well, stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath.

IW: What sort of new rules would that put on manufacturers if that standard becomes the new rule?

DB: Things like mandating heat breaks or rest breaks. And the debate becomes: what kind of companies does that apply to? Say I’ve got workers outside on a farm—do I have to bring them into an air-conditioned area every 20 or 30 minutes? Do I have to install air conditioning? Build big shade structures? Create a designated rest area?

If I take workers off the assembly line, what does that do to productivity? All these kinds of questions become subject to debate. But the basic premise is: you don’t want someone getting sick, fainting, or experiencing heat prostration. The best way to prevent that? Let them take a break. Drink some water. Of course, then people say, “Well, if they drink a lot of water, they’ll need more restroom breaks…” and on and on. All of that is part of the debate.

So, what should you do? What can you do? You don’t have to wait for OSHA to tell you. Use common sense. Let your workers keep a bottle of water at their station. Let them take a break if they feel faint. Sit down, catch your breath, get some shade. If there's no AC, at least have a big ventilation fan. It seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes you’ve just got to do it.

Other recommendations—again, part of OSHA’s proposed rule, but no reason to wait—include a buddy system. Train your workers to understand what heat stress feels like. And teach them to spot the signs in coworkers. If someone’s nodding off or doesn’t look well, that’s easy to see if you’re paying attention.

I can’t emphasize this enough: just train your workers to know the signs. I went over a few of them, but not everyone is going to say, “I feel sick.” Sometimes you just have to notice it.

One last thing I’ll point out—some new technologies are being promoted by groups like the National Safety Council, and some companies are developing them on their own. Wearable devices—like smartwatches—that collect health data: heart rate, pulse, temperature, etc., to detect early signs of heat stress.

There are apps that give workers real-time feedback on their health. Some companies are working on rapid cooling solutions for body temperature. Others are deploying drones in rural areas to map out where heat stress is most likely to occur. That’s kind of the ultimate heat network.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.