Health & Wellbeing
CoolVest turns heatstroke from fatal to treatable condition WITH THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT HEATSTROKE IS AN IMMEDIATELY TREATABLE CONDITION. HOWEVER, HEATSTROKE CAN HAVE DISASTROUS LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES ON HEALTH IF LEFT UNTREATED. SAFE TO WORK SPEAKS TO COOLVEST ABOUT ITS LIGHTWEIGHT AND PORTABLE HEATSTROKE SOLUTION. CoolVest can lower an adult’s body temperature from 42 degrees Celsius to a safe 37.5 degrees Celsius.
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rought on by a core body temperature of 40 degrees Celsius or higher, heatstroke can cause confusion, agitation, slurred speech, irritability, delirium, nausea and vomiting, flushed skin, rapid breathing, a racing heart and a headache. Considered an emergency condition, heatstroke can lead to devastating consequences such as brain, heart, kidney and muscle damage, coma, or even death if left untreated. For anyone suffering heatstroke, the recommended treatment is to immediately lower their core body temperature by placing them in a bath of iced water. However, as CoolVest founder and chief executive officer Jonathan
Weinberg explains, an iced bath of water is the last thing you’re likely to find in some work environments, such as mine sites or at an army base, where his idea for CoolVest was born. Following four unfortunate heatstroke fatalities during training, Weinberg developed a military grade heatstroke solution that could be used by the United Kingdom Special Forces. Now, the CoolVest is being deployed in other industries characterised by physical roles in typically hot conditions, such as mining.
SAFETOWORK.COM.AU 48 SEP-OCT 2020
“Before CoolVest, the only effective way to immediately begin lowering someone’s core body temperature, which is the only way to treat potentially fatal heatstroke, was to immerse them in a bath of iced water, or try and use multiple smaller pre-cooled packs of ice (which were messy and underpowered),” Weinberg tells Safe to Work. “Obviously this isn’t something that is available on most work sites and it can take anywhere between four and eight hours for suitable treatment to arrive to mine sites in remote areas.” CoolVest fills this gap for a potentially life-saving solution, as a self-activating wearable product that does not require
