Guidance for Managing Working in Elevated Temperatures

Developed in consultation with all sectors of the UK glass manufacturing industry, the Health and Safety Executive and with input from worker unions, this guidance provides practical guidance to help employers understand where the potential for heat-related illness could occur, recognise the symptoms and ensure that necessary control measures are understood and can be properly implemented.

Throughout the development of this guidance British Glass has received much interest from a wide range of industries as far afield as Australia, where employees could potentially develop heat stress should control measures fail to prevent injury.

There are examples of heat related medical problems caused by heat stress in industrial, military, rescue and leisure industries and a key factor in many of these cases is the level of understanding of working in hot conditions – both behaviourally and physiologically. Task performance, co-ordination and judgement can also be detrimentally affected by exposure to elevated temperatures – in some industries this has been shown to affect levels of unsafe acts and accidents.

Working in high temperatures and high humidity can not only cause serious illness, but also loss of concentration leading to accidents, unsafe acts and lower productivity.

As part of the development of this guidance British Glass and IOSH commissioned the Institute of Occupational Medicine Ltd (IOM) to conduct a research study to investigate the feasibility of non-intrusive measurement of core body temperature and also provide feedback on existing control measures. This project was completed in 2009 and the study has since been expanded following interest by the Health and Safety Executive who have funded a further study to improve the reliability of the test methodology.

The glass industry has a long track record of taking a proactive approach to health, safety and sensible risk management. The industry, in partnership with HSE and unions, launched the ‘GLASS Charter’ initiative in 2001 in order to push forward improvement in health and safety – the first sector initiative of its kind – and now, 11 years on, is setting about refreshing the scheme and setting a new ambitious strategy leading forward to 2020.

This guidance document, together with a second document for the container glass sector, ‘Code of Practice for Glass Forming (I.S.) Machines’, will be launched on Thursday, 3 May 2012, at the prestigious Annual Glass Industry Health and Safety Conference – an event that brings together all sectors of the glass industry to discuss common issues, and monitor changes in health and safety that will affect their operations. The guidance will be made available here following the conference.