There have been serious incidents of heat stress involving hospitalisation or even death, increasing the need for the coal mining and exploration sectors to consider their procedures for protecting workers and for dealing with situations where workers develop heat-related illnesses.

“Heat exposure can be a problem in Queensland, especially in the summer months,” the mines inspectorate said in a safety alert.

“There are a number of individual and medical factors that affect a worker's ability to regulate heat.

“Sites should consider the systems they have in place for communicating these factors to workers, site health personnel and the medical personnel who may be prescribing medications to workers.”

There are a number of risk assessment methods or tools used to assess heat exposure in the mining and exploration sectors, such as wet bulb globe temperature, effective temperature, basic effective temperature and thermal work limit.

Some methods or tools are more suited to specific conditions, tasks and jobs than others.

As a minimum, sites should consider factors such as radiant heat (globe temperature), air temperature (dry bulb), air movement and humidity.

The inspectorate recommends replacing equipment known to generate excessive heat with equipment less likely to produce excessive heat, for example, using electric-powered mobile plant instead of diesel equipment.

It also recommends enclosing equipment and installing effective air conditioning in all buildings and increasing ventilation or designing better cooling systems.

Rescheduling work to cooler times of the shift, scheduling effective work/rest regimes and managing hydration and acclimatisation would also mitigate against the effects of heat stress.