Physiological monitoring for occupational heat stress management: recent advancements and remaining challenges

Occupational heat stress poses a major threat to worker health and safety that is projected to worsen with global climate warming. To manage these adverse effects, most industries rely on administrative controls (stay times and work-to-rest allocations) that are designed to limit the rise in body core temperature in the 'average' individual. However, due to the extensive inter- and intra-individual variation in thermoregulatory function, these administrative controls will result in some individuals having their work rate and productivity unnecessarily restricted (false positives), while others may be subject to rises in heat strain that compromise health (false negatives). Physiological monitoring has long been touted as a more effective approach for individualized protection from excessive heat stress. This has led to extensive interest in the use of wearable technology for heat stress management from both the scientific community and manufacturers of wearable devices, which has accelerated in the past decade. In this review, we evaluate the merits of the recent and emerging approaches to manage occupational heat strain with wearable physiological monitors. Against this background, we then describe the issues that we perceive to be unresolved regarding the use of wearable heat strain monitors and the research efforts needed to address those issues. Particular emphasis is directed to the efficacy of existing physiological indicators of heat strain, how to define upper limits for those indicators and the efforts required to rigorously validate emerging wearable heat strain monitoring devices.