From the BARCELONA INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH (ISGLOBAL) and the “only from the minds of bureaucracy” department comes this absurd claim:
Moderate and extreme temperatures could increase the risk of occupational injuries
Moderate and extreme ambient temperatures increase the risk of occupational accidents. This is the main conclusion of a new study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Banking Foundation. The study analysed data on nearly 16 million occupational injuries that occurred in Spain over a 20-year period.
Heat and cold are believed to be associated with a higher risk of occupational injury, but the existing scientific evidence consists of only a handful of studies with a small number of cases and a limited geographic scope, and the economic impact has never been analysed in detail.
The new study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to analyse data from an entire country and evaluate the economic impact. Researchers analysed data related to nearly 16 million occupational injuries in Spain between 1994 and 2013 that resulted in at least one day of sick leave. This information was analysed in relation to the daily temperatures in the province where each injury occurred.
“Exposure to moderate to extreme temperatures may have played a role in over half a million of the workplace injuries that occurred during the study period,” commented ISGlobal researcher Èrica Martínez, lead author of the study. The analysis found that, on average, some 60 temperature-related injuries leading to at least one lost workday occurred each day, accounting for 2.7% of all work-related injuries in Spain. Extremes of cold and heat increased the risk of injury by 4% and 9%, respectively.
The biological mechanisms that link exposure to extreme ambient temperatures with the risk of occupational injury “are not yet fully understood”, explained Martínez. The most common types of injuries analysed in the study were bone fractures and superficial injuries. “This suggests that the underlying mechanism could be related to impaired concentration or judgement, which would affect occupational safety,” noted the researcher. Moreover, temperature-related effects were not limited to the day of exposure; a “pattern of delayed impact”, possibly caused by cumulative fatigue and dehydration, was observed in the days following exposure.
The study also concluded that women appear to be more vulnerable to cold and men more vulnerable to heat. This difference could be explained by the fact that women have lower sweat rates than men in hot climates. The youngest workers were the most vulnerable to heat, possibly because they tend to do more physically demanding work.
As for the economic impact of nonoptimal temperatures, the study found that temperature-related loss of working days had an annual cost of more than €360 million, representing 0.03% of Spain’s gross domestic product in 2015. Moderately high temperatures contributed the most to the economic losses.
“In the present context of climate change, these results indicate that public health interventions are needed to protect workers,” concluded ISGlobal researcher Xavier Basagaña, the study coordinator. “Most workplace injuries can be attributed to moderate heat and moderate cold. This shows us how important it is for public health policies and plans to take moderate temperature ranges into account, since they are more common than extreme temperatures and account for a larger share of total injuries.”
Preventive measures that could be incorporated into public health policies include restricting work during the coldest and hottest hours, taking rest breaks, ensuring proper hydration and wearing appropriate work clothes.
###
Why was this study not affected by Section 155 ?
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/09/19/inenglish/1505810381_137420.html
Section 155 was used to stop the separatist coup plotters to keep violating human rights, the constitution and the law.
Yep, bad people like those who separated without the permission of their king in 1776.
But it’s the government in madrid who is selling spain. They are the real plotters changing independent spain in just a powerless province of the Eu.
And what human rights are you talking about ?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Yellow_ribbon.svg
Separatists who won the elections organised by madrid.
The law made by people who didn’t want others to have their say.
The constitution made by people who didn’t want what they didn’t like.
And voting is violating a human right?
….Absurd claim: global warming to increase on-the-job injuries..
Accurate claim: global warming to increase taxes…
There. Fixed that for you…
“Preventive measures that could be incorporated into public health policies include restricting work during the coldest and HOTTEST hours,”
La siesta
” lugares colonizados por España, y en la misma España, situada al sur de Europa, en ese lapso es cuando hace más calor”
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta
“SPANISH students currently enjoy the longest school holidays in Europe, going a whopping three months with no classes…”
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2015/08/22/spanish-school-holidays-too-long/
On the other hand, in Spain many jobs let out at 8 PM. Regarding the number of school days, it seems to be adequate. I attended school in the USA, and took mostly honors/advanced courses. Now that I’m retired in Spain, I mentor some students on science projects, and see what they learn. My impression is that a Spanish REGULAR MATH, CHEMISTRY or PHYSICS curriculum is harder and more comprehensive than the USA honors/advanced counterpart. They make it so hard it drives away students into the humanities (those I don’t really monitor much, although I believe the courses are taught by communists). And of course it drives away the girls. This means very few females study engineering and hard core science.
The problem in Spain is associated with the socialist laws which created poor work incentives. Spain is like California’s future, in say 20-30 years.
That’s why the Catalans want/need to leave. And now with the socialist in power again the sooner the better.
“They make it so hard it drives away students into the humanities ” “And of course it drives away the girls”
Why think in gender ? I want the best people on the job so make it hard.
Something there is that doesn’t love a lie.
It is something of a psychology lesson. Why does fear of more ‘extremely average’ temperatures frighten global-warmers?
Look at it as an insight into how their mind works: More of extreme higher temperatures is bad, and more of extreme lower temperatures is also bad. Therefore more of extreme temperatures in-between must also be bad too.
That is how their mind (singular) tends to work,but in the past they didn’t claim to be scientists or apply for funding based on their perceptions. As government funding for the Arts in academia has become progressively harder in relative terms over recent decades, more of them have to pretend to be scientists in order to get funding. The later economic development of Spain means that they have been more prone to the insanity oozing out of EU elites employed as bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasburg, because it came with free money attached.
When I was in college, back in the early 1970s, I worked summers in the Chrysler car and truck assembly plants in Fenton, MO. I unloaded everything from tires to bales of fiberglass batting from semi-trailers onto racks, I drove fork lifts, I was a janitor, and I worked on the assembly line. A major manufacturing plant in Missouri in the summer time is a very, very hot place. Interior temperatures were seldom below 100 F, even at night. On every vertical column in the place was a salt station, a place where anyone could grab a few hundred milligrams of salt tablets at any time. The young ones, like me, were big consumers. As a janitor, I worked everywhere in the plant. My least favorite place was the paint booth, which I likened to Dante’s Inferno. It was hot by design, with heat lamps trained on the cars to dry the paint as quickly as possible. I’d say it was easily 120 F even when the line was stopped for us janitors to go in. The people who did the actual painting (now done by robots) wore heavy coveralls, and were supposed to wear full face respirators (though few did). I don’t know how they survived. But they did, and I recall only a handful of people being injured on the job in several summers working there. Not a single one was heat-related. A father and son working on the rail dock were killed when a boxcar door fell on them. A fork lift driver was badly injured on his first night, when the elevator on the paint floor (the second floor) gave way under the front wheels of his 10,000 pound fork lift. That’s it, AFAIR.
I could have just said “This is BS.” But I thought I’d back it up.
Pointing out an individual experience, even in a paint shop with others, is not a refutation of a study of 16M injuries.
Unless they can provide the temperature at the time of the injury as well as the humidity, which is very important to physiological stress, such statistics are meaningless. I do not see that level of examination here. Man injuries could just as well occur in the off peak temperature of the day and still be judged by the peal temperature.
Yes the whole thing suffers from the Exposure Fallacy. And this is Spain, where the work day still avoids the midday heat across much of the country.
Why not read the paper before passing judgement?
analysed data related to nearly 16 million occupational injuries in Spain between 1994 and 2013 that resulted in at least one day of sick leave. This information was analysed in relation to the daily temperatures in the province where each injury occurred.
Back in the 1930s there was a huge increrase in the purchase of radio licences. There was also a huge increase in the diagnoses of mental disorders.
One could conclude owning a radio was likely to send one mad.
So let’s see. It’s been shown that productivity is reduced at higher temperatures. It’s been shown that cognitive abilities are impaired at higher temperatures. But it’s absurd for on the job injuries to be greater at higher temperatures? It’s actually absurd to take that position. Gee, when is your focus on a task at hand better – when it’s hot, or when it’s normal temperatures? There’s a reason why siestas were adopted in warm climate countries.
Is it possible that more injuries occur during warmer times because of more work and more dangerous work being done during the warmer times of the year?
In most places I have lived construction work, landscaping and road building slows way down in the winter, then ramps back up in the summer.
Another possibility is that more people taking a vacation in the warmer months mean other people have to cover for them either doing more work and/or work they are less familiar with.