NIEHS releases heat stress prevention training program in Spanish

Washington — A Spanish-language version of a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences resource intended to help employers identify and implement steps to protect workers from heat stress is now available.

The Building Blocks for a Heat Stress Prevention Training Program is organized into five sections (with checklists) and an appendix. The sections cover:

• How to determine heat stress
• What training, approaches and resources are needed for a heat stress management program
• How heat is controlled in the workplace
• What makes heat stress worse?
• Approaches to ensure workers’ rights

The appendix features two tables from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists on threshold limit values and action limit values for heat stress.

The resource is especially useful for workers in construction, transportation, agriculture, disaster response and recovery, “and many other jobs that are vulnerable to the impacts of heat stress,” NIEHS says.