High School Research at Jefferson Lab

Correlation of Heat Index and Wet Bulb Globe Temperature in Selected Area of Jefferson Lab

One of the responsibilities of the Environmental Health and Safety/Industrial Hygiene Department at Jefferson Lab is to protect employees from being in danger of heat stress. Heat stress is when the body's means of controlling internal body temperature begins to fail as a result of working in very hot environments. Currently, the Environmental Health and Safety/Industrial Hygiene Department relies on Heat Index alerts that are sent out on pagers to warn against possible dangers associated with heat stress. A common workplace heat stress assessment method is the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) as listed in the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists' Threshold Limit Values (TLV). The limitation with using the WBGT is that collecting accurate data is time consuming, involves special equipment, and requires manual labor. In this experiment, weather data was collected, including the WBGT, manually using a QUESTemp thermometer. Weather data, including the Heat Index, was also collected from the Jefferson Lab weather station each day. Then, both the manual data and the weather station data were analyzed to highlight any correlations or differences between the two.