We’re off next week for a summer vacation. ☀️ We’ll be back on August 19th, and as always will send push alerts through the ZHH app if anything urgent comes up.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or need help, call 988 or message the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
The more we learn about wildfire smoke, the more we understand just how harmful it can be, even indoors and even hundreds of miles from where the fires are burning. Wildfire smoke is especially dangerous for people with asthma, COPD, diabetes, or heart disease, and for pregnant women or kids. Indoor air quality can be just as bad as outdoors, thanks to the very fine particles wildfires produce.
Indoor air quality (IAQ) mandates could be the next regulatory trend. California and New Jersey already have rules in place, and after the Canadian wildfire smoke turned the NYC skyline red in 2023, city officials began considering their own rules. This month’s double whammy of fires in the American West and Canada triggered air quality alerts in at least a dozen states, putting IAQ back on lawmakers’ radar. Even if your state doesn’t have specific regulations, clean indoor air could fall under OSHA's General Duty clause.
What can you do now? Keep outside air outside by closing windows, keeping doors shut, and checking that HVAC systems are not set to fresh air intake. Consider offering N95s for outside work or to help employees during their commute. Skip candles and air fresheners when air quality is bad, since those add to indoor pollutants.
Wildfire smoke is no longer a rare event for most of the country, and preparing your locations now can make all the difference in keeping your teams safe and your business running.
Sources: CNN, KFF Health News, WSJ, CDC, OSHA
We’ve started to see them everywhere this summer: hands-free fans that hang around your neck and help keep you cool. The basics check out – people cool down when their sweat evaporates, and fans can help speed that process up.
Most people who try them report that the fans help make the heat more bearable, but unfortunately they don’t actually do much to cool down people’s core temperatures, just mask it a bit. That can backfire, causing over-exertion in the heat without realizing it. As a result, fans aren’t actually useful for treating or preventing heat stroke. A better investment might be in other cooling garments, like vests, that focus on lowering someone’s core temperature.
At the end of the day, if your business is interested in investing in a long-term strategy for heat illness prevention, start with policies, not products. Acclimatizing periods for new workers, frequent breaks, cool water, and strong SOPs for when to cut down on outdoor work should probably be your first lines of defense as heatwaves become more common.
Sources: NPR
New research found that as temperatures increased, more people visited emergency rooms for illnesses beyond just heat stroke - including those linked to poison, respiratory symptoms and nervous system problems. Kids under 5 were most affected.