The day after a holiday weekend, during a pandemic, is a great day to talk about heat stress and hydration!

These short audio messages are returning to their original format – toolbox talk, tailgate meeting, or other short safety communication prep for a safety professional or supervisor. Basically, let me give you a prompt each week for current events or relevant safety topic to cover in your onsite communications. Or, maybe you’re inspired to record your own audio or video messages for your organization (you totally should).

There’s a lot to talk about related to hydration, so we’ll start with that this week, and move into other heat stress topics in the coming weeks as the weather heats up.

Here’s some of my go-to resources for hydration information:

OSHA’s Campaign to Prevent Heat Illness landing page

Korey Stringer Institute – Korey played for the Minnesota Vikings and died of heat stroke at training camp in August 2001.

Ergodyne blog – PREVENTING HEAT STRESS AT WORK: YOUR GUIDE TO HEAT STRESS RISKS & SOLUTIONS – start with this post, and click around their site for more related topics and toolbox talks

Safeopedia’s heat stress info landing page

EHS on Tap podcast – I was interviewed on the topic of heat stress 3+ years ago, the discussion is still relevant! It’s a podcast on Soundcloud, but you don’t need an account to listen.

Italian Journal of Emergency Medicine– a quick read on a case of a young person and their experience of extreme heat stress where consumption of energy drinks is partially at fault.

Electrical Contractor Magazine article on heat stress and energy drinks, suitable for printing & posting at your worksite.