Climatic Parameters and Outdoor Workers Safety and Health: A Case Study of Sabzevar City (2011-2017)

Abstract

Background: Climate change and global warming present a significant threat to outdoor workers. Climatic parameters change has increased the risk of outdoor workers' safety and health. The objective of this paper was to examine the hypothesis of an association between six years data of climatic parameters and outdoor workers' safety and health.

Methods: A variety of approaches have been produced to assess and measure workers' occupational heat exposure and the risk of heat-related disorders. In this study, maximum, mean, and minimum daily temperatures were used in the heat wave models to compare the sensitivity of predictions according to different climatic parameters in the case study of Sabzevar, settled in the north east of Iran, Khorasan Razavi Province. In this perusal, we used a 6-year data (from March 2011 to June 2017) on medical attendance because of outdoor workers disorders and also daily values of different climatically parameters to investigate the hypothesis of an association between heat indices and outdoor workers disorders.

Results: Mean temperature in the case study period was 18.95(0.21) °C. The minimum and maximum recorded temperature in the perusal period was -11.2 °C and 45.4 °C, respectively. The highest and lowest number of outdoor workers disorders was observed for the 11th (max daily air temperature > 35°C for ≥ 1 day) and 4th (mean daily air temperature > 99th percentile for ≥ 2 sequential days) definition of the heat wave in 16 definitions (17.75(4.80) and 0, respectively).

Conclusion: This study found that extreme temperature was associated with outdoor worker disorders in Sabzevar. Research into the future likelihood, existence and magnitude of safety and health consequences of global warming and climate change represent an important input to national policy debates.