Head for the hills

The effects of the summer heat might strike you without warning.

In steel foundries and brick kilns, industrial plants and factories, commercial kitchens and bakeries, on fields and construction sites, workers toil hour after hour in the hot air and high humidity. They may also face radiant heat, from a furnace or hob, or the sun itself. They fight the physiological and mental effects of their working environment, and the extra chance of error and injury due to sweaty palms and sweat-misted safety goggles.

You may be forgiven for scoffing. Perhaps half of your own colleagues turn up at work late, looking puffy-eyed, listless and parboiled. On some days you, too, may fit this description. They, and you, will have spent days fighting the furnace-like summer air outdoors, suffocating stuffiness if the office loses power, and nights trying to stir the soupy air with a hand-fan.

Because power cuts are back at full strength. Too much sun, and fading prospects of the monsoon’s saving grace, mean that power grids are being sucked dry, just like lakes and rivers. There’s not enough juice left on which to run the fans, airconditioners and refrigerators which make our lives tolerable in summer.

Heat stress is a recognised hazard. It could hit you in one or more of several ways. Heat stroke is the most dangerous. It occurs when the body can no longer control its internal temperature, which can climb very swiftly. Past about 106 degrees Fahrenheit, the body may sustain permanent damage without emergency medical help. Watch out for hot, dry skin, a pounding headache, dizziness and difficulty in speaking, chills and hallucinations. The immediate priority is to cool the sufferer down.

Heat leads to dehydration, which is a loss of necessary water and salts in the sweat. This particularly affects the elderly. Watch for heavy sweating, unusual weakness, nausea and dizziness, muscle cramps and fast, shallow breathing. Get the patient cool and give them plenty of water to drink. Don’t drink caffeinated, alcoholic or sugary drinks.

Heat cramps affect those who work physically in the heat. Sweating removes salts, and low salt levels in the muscles causes cramps. Watch for muscular spasms. Stop working, get cool and rehydrate. If you have a heart problem, see a doctor.

Too much sweating can give you heat rash, a field of tiny pimples or blisters particularly where skins or fabric rubs against skin. Lots of powders are sold expressly to fight heat rash by keeping the skin dry.

All solutions involve cooling the patient — but, during a power cut, one is more or less helpless. With global warming, perhaps it’s time to revive an old colonial habit, and convince our employers to shift base every summer into the hills.