抄録
Workers must wear a respirator and protective clothing to prevent inhalation and contamination by radioactive materials when carrying out certain inspection, maintenance activities at nuclear facilities and other emergency situations. Temperature and humidity increase with time within the protective clothing during such work. This is because the protective clothing is necessarily impermeable so that heat and perspiration caused by physical labor remain. Therefore, the worker’s body temperature and related heatstroke risk gradually increase. To date, workers wearing the protective clothing have been supervised by time management and individual subjective information. This conventional management method may not efficiently monitor any change of heat load and workers’ related health conditions. We therefore combine objective physiological information (including measured worker’s infrared tympanic temperature and heart rate) with individual subjective information, in order to reduce the risk of heatstroke. To this end, a remote (heat strain) monitoring device has been developed. In this paper, we present an overview of the system, the result of functional and efficiency evalution and operational results obtained under actual working conditions.
