Physiological and Physical Responses of Heat Stress: A Study on Women Farm Workers during Wheat Harvesting

Abstract

Heart rate and mean skin temperature (MST) are the physiological workload and overall discomfort rate (ODR), Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is the physical workload due to heat stress. The whole study was conducted during the manual harvesting of wheat crop by using local sickle at instructional Farm, CTAE, Udaipur. The study was conducted on ten female farm workers identified from the population of workers in the age bracket of 18 to 45 years. The chosen workers were wearing their usual outfits during the whole operation. Mean skin temperature measurement is necessary to assess the thermal comfort of the farm workers. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the mean skin temperature of Indian farm women. Therefore, the experiment was designed for five WBGT conditions i.e. 28, 29, 30, 31 and 32°C which falls under the category of heat stress given in norms of ACGIH. A variation of ± 0.5°C was assumed in the open field conditions, as it is very difficult to achieve exact thermal conditions i.e., WBGT conditions in the open field.