NIOSH provides heat stress prevention resources for miners

Heat stress poses a risk to mining workers. To ensure miner safety, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has provided several free resources to address the risks associated with working in extreme heat and hot mine settings.

Working in high heat can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and organ damage. Research also suggests a link between heat stress and increased work-related injuries, such as slips, trips, and falls.

The free resources include:

• Keeping cool: an online training module designed to help mine workers understand and reduce their risk factors for heat-related illness.
• Heat stress: a series of fact sheets for promoting safe work in hot mine setting.
• Heat stress: a poster to help workers understand heat stress risk factors, prevention, and treatment; and
• Heat safety tool: an app that provides real-time heat index information for the worker’s location.

Additional recommendations and resources can be found at cdc.gov.