Madras Chamber of Commerce & Industry & FaMeTN (Facilitating MSMEs) for conducting the workshop on “Building Resilience to Heat Stress in MSMEs” in Chennai last week.
It was a pleasure being part of the workshop along with other leading experts in this field: Dr. Senthil Kumar, JD, CD DPH, Dr. Vidhya Venugopal, Country Director – NIHR & Mr. Ravi Deshik – NIC
This session is for MSME owners, managers, and industry leaders seeking to safeguard their enterprises and workforce from the growing risks of HEAT STRESS.
A Few Key Program Takeaways were;
– There are both direct and indirect impacts of heat stress, like heat stroke, heat cramp, productivity loss, economic loss, etc., if proper interventions are not done through awareness, training, etc.
– According to the duration of exposure, there will be both acute and systemic impacts on the health & well-being of workers and occupants, which are normally not addressed.
– There are both major and minor heat stress-related illnesses, which MSMEs and, general public need to have sufficient awareness to prevent them.
– Multiple Measures are being taken by the TN Public Health Department, like awareness campaigns, 1000 rehydration points, ORS corners in public assemblies, tree saplings, green shading in traffic signals, AC helmets for traffic police, etc.
– Use innovative tools like Wind Rose Diagrams & Computation Fluid Dynamics simulation to evaluate the impact of traditional strategies like roofing colour, envelope passive measures, ventilation openings sizes and their locations, skylights, optimum air changes per hour, process motors’ efficiencies, evaporative cooling, etc.
– Finalize the feasible measures after ascertaining the thermal comfort of occupants using personal & environmental parameters through the ASHRAE 55 tool.
– Various insurance policies are available for MSMEs to cover damages that can be caused by Heat Stress and related incidents.
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