Abstract
Ongoing climate change in recent years has produced higher temperatures and has increased the number of extremely hot days in many parts of the world. With this climate change, casualties due to heat disorders have also tended to increase in the workplace as well as the local community in Japan. To cope with this urgent occupational and environmental health problem, the Japanese government has been forced to take prompt preventive measures against heat disorders.
This paper firstly reports on the recent trends in the incidence of occupational heat disorders over the last couple of years in Japan and secondly provides an overview of the national administrative measures for occupational heat disorder prevention that have been taken so far by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). On the basis of these findings, the author discusses how we should promote the preventive measures against occupational heat disorders, particularly focusing on how we should evaluate the effectiveness of products to protect against occupational heat disorders as preventive measures. It is concluded that a comprehensive and multiple assessment approach consisting of physical, physiological and field studies is required to address this challenging issue.
