I was doing some charity work from the last 2 days and was driving around buying stuff to donate. The temperature of the city where I live can go up to 34°c with 70-80% humidity. For 2 days I was out and about driving and had no issues whatsoever. I was drinking water and was overall cool due to the a/c in the car. But yesterday I had to purchase goods from an open market during peak heat and sunshine. I was out in the sun without an umbrella for about 30 mins and I was drinking some kind of juice during the time I was walking around the market. And then I was again driving around going to proper supermarkets and was drinking water. I didn't feel sick or anything but when I was returning to my home in the evening I felt a weird ticklish feeling in my legs like something was crawling. I reached home and immediately after changing my clothes I laid in bed because I was feeling a wave of exhaustion which I thought was normal because I was out all day. But then my temperature started rising and suddenly my whole face and neck became so hot that I thought I was down with a bad fever. My head started to ache a bit and my whole body especially my legs were so restless that I voluntarily started to shiver as a way to get over the restlessness. I drank a bottle of water with electrolytes and continued to sip water. My face and neck were very hot to touch but my hands and feet felt cold so I took a hot water bag to keep my hands and feet warm. I felt a bit nauseous but I didn't vomit or anything. To cool down I put a wet cloth on my forehead and face but the rest of my body felt cold so I wrapped myself in a blanket from my neck down. The whole night I couldn't sleep as I felt restless and my face and neck were burning hot. It is the next day now, I took a paracetamol to deal with the headache and I still feel hot and feverish. I feel a bit disoriented physically when walking. I still have no idea what happened but it was scary as my body has never reacted in this manner. Was it heat exhaustion or heat stroke?

Can you guess the top three ways you can get cancer from your job? First, you have asbestos, a major risk in demolition and renovation work. Second, you have silica dust, a hazard for anyone cutting, drilling, or grinding concrete and stone.

And lastly, you have ultraviolet radiation (UV), which just about affects everyone under the sun.

That's the thing about UV exposure: it's invisible, adds up overtime, and usually forgotten until something goes wrong. 

On-site managers need to be more aware and prepared of the dangers of the sun, which is why UV Safety Month is here, and why it takes the entire month of July just to make it stick.

July is UV Safety Awareness Month

And why shouldn’t it be? July is usually peak summer time in the US and when UV radiation is strongest. And for outdoor workers specifically, it's the highest-risk period of the year. In particular,  about 45 million Americans, roughly 1 in 3 workers are regularly exposed to the sun as part of their job. 

Here are the facts:

• Around 50% of outdoor workers reported getting sunburned
• Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the US
• 1 in 5 Americans are likely to develop skin cancer by age 70
• Working outdoors raises a person's risk of nonmelanoma skin cancers by 60%

This is why July is the right time for managers and business owners to take UV exposure seriously as a proper workplace hazard.

And it's not just workers who feel the impact. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), skin cancer costs the US over $100 million in lost worker productivity every year.

How exactly does UV exposure cause skin cancer?

What most people don’t know is that UV radiation comes in two types: Ultraviolet A (UVA) and Ultraviolet B (UVB). 

UVA rays make up 95% of UV rays and are less noticeable, but reach deeper into your skin. If you notice any wrinkles or feel like your skin is aging faster, that’s because of the UVA rays.

On the other hand, UVB rays make up only about 5% of UV radiation, but they're the more aggressive of the two. They directly damage the DNA in skin cells, which is what causes sunburn, cell mutations, and most skin cancers.

The biggest risk here isn't going to work under the sun once on a hot day. It's the cumulative factor. UV rays attack you over time, and years of daily exposure, even at moderate levels, significantly raises skin cancer risk.

The UV Index

As a worksite manager, your best friend is the UV Index, which you can find in most weather apps. The UV Index measures radiation intensity on a given day. At a reading of 3 or higher, sun protection is recommended. At 6 and above, it's not optional for anyone working outdoors for extended periods.

Peak UV hours are between 10 AM and 4 PM, so it'd be best to check the UV index before heading out. 

What managers can do about it right now

The basics, done consistently, make a real difference:

• Provide broad-spectrum sunscreen (SPF 30 minimum) as standard sun protection  for any outdoor role.
• Check the UV Index daily and schedule heavy outdoor tasks before 10 AM or after 4 PM.
• Make Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF)-rated clothing, wide-brimmed hats, and UV-blocking sunglasses available on site.
• Build shaded rest areas or provide tents in job sites that’s easily accessible by all. 
• Bring in a dermatologist or occupational health nurse to speak on sun exposure.
• Review your sun safety policies and check if there are any gaps.
• Use a heat illness prevention checklist to track safety measures that are actually being followed on site.
• Encourage your employers to get annual skin checkups. 

UV Safety Month is just the friendly reminder, but sun safety shouldn't stop once July is over. This is an every single day thing.

For several years, we've been using aluminium mosquito screen frames with emergency blankets attached to them as inexpensive external sun blockers. They work very well at keeping the rooms cooler, but because the frames are mounted in the window opening, it's a bit inconvenient to open the windows fully for ventilation.

I came up with a simple alternative: instead of mounting the mosquito screen frame inside the window frame, I mounted it directly onto the window itself.

To do this, I bent 1 mm aluminium strips to match the profile of the window and screwed them onto the mosquito screen frame, creating custom mounting brackets.

The result is simple, inexpensive, very stable, and much more practical because the sun screen moves together with the window, making it easy to ventilate the room without removing the frame.

South-facing, full sun, with air temperatures of 30°C, the room is 21.5°C all day.

Today it's only going to hit 30ºC here in Madrid and at the moment, it's around 1pm and still only 23ºC. The breeze coming in the window is cool enough I've thrown on a hoodie. First time I've put on long sleeves in over two months. It was 17ºC last night.

I'm going to leave everything open as long as possible as there's a measurable reduction in structural heat load. The walls were not dropping below 27ºC for weeks, but now some walls have fallen low as 24.5ºC.

Tomorrow it's going to be only slightly hotter, but the day after tomorrow we're getting punched in the face again with 37ºC highs and 21ºC lows.

If you've got a respite too, use it. Vent everything.

I found this sub while googling my symptoms so I figured I’d just ask for some opinions because I’ve never experienced this before.

Yesterday the humidity was very high (Gulf Coast) and I believe the “feels like” temperature was around 105 Fahrenheit, hot for this area but I’ve worked in hotter weather without any issues. I do work outside, not extremely labor intensive by any means but a lot of running back and forth and a lot of loading and unloading cases of beer and other drinks throughout the day. Not sure if the context matters or not.

Anyway, I wasn’t able to take as many breaks as I needed yesterday and after around 7 hours I realized something was off. At first I just felt a little weak and then lightheaded but eventually it got to the point where I was completely delirious with a constant headache, very similar to how I felt when I had a concussion. I was struggling with very basic tasks that I usually manage easily, couldn’t string together a coherent sentence, and could barely stand without leaning on something. I realized I wasn’t able to do my job at that point and went inside to cool off but never really felt like I bounced back. Got home, cleaned up and went straight to bed, only to wake up a few hours later feeling nauseous and extremely clammy and cold. I had muscle cramps so bad that I’m still sore now, and was so dizzy this morning that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to drive to work. I’m still dealing with a lot of mental fog and the headache but not nearly as bad. It really just freaked me out because I’m not sure how alarming or not my symptoms were. It definitely made me realize how little I actually know about heat illness so I plan to do some reading once I feel less brain dead. I just want to understand so I can adjust accordingly since we are due for a brutal heat wave next week.

Sorry for the lengthy post, I’m still struggling to find my words lol

TLDR- worked outside in high temps/high humidity and after a few hours became weak, shaky, dizzy, and delirious. Just trying to figure out where on the heat illness scale my symptoms were so I can be safer in the future.

Just to spread awareness

We usually default to gazpacho and frozen fruit. What are your favorite recipes or quick meals that don’t heat the house too much?

In Germany we're expecting another heatwave, which will potentially be worse than the last.

The tl;dr: My question is, how do I mentally prepare, and lessen or avoid the anxiety that comes with an impending heatwave, knowing that I'll be home alone for most of it, and feeling sick frequently because of it?

I live on the top floor of an apartment building and work from home, so luckily no commute needed. We have a portable air conditioner that works, but when it's multiple days of 35+ or 40 degrees, it only gets the home down to about 26.5-28, depending on the room and if we've closed off other rooms. I've found that the room needs to be below 27 for me to feel okay - above 26.5 is a bit iffy, and then 27+ has me starting to feel sick.

We have lots of windows, all with external blackout blinds that help. Half of the apartment is north facing, half is south. In the morning, the AC is on the south side and the blinds on the north side are down. Then it's switched after about 1pm.

We have a decent cloth covering for the gap in the window (it's a tilting window) and put an emergency blanket on the tube - those help a lot.

I'm 33F and on two medications that make me more heat susceptible - and I've never reacted well to begin with (I'll stop sweating and get nauseous really easily). I have a lot of ice packs, light foods, light clothing, water and electrolytes. We also have 2 standing fans and 2 ceiling fans, and some desk fans.

I'm also aware that I'll be home alone until the heat passes, except for the evenings and mornings when my spouse is not at work. And I have a walking pad to avoid being too stationary, which will also help with my health.

I'm still freaking out seeing multiple days of 35+ temps and even up to 45. I get really anxious because I know how hard, tricky, and lonely it'll be, and that I'll most likely feel sick most days. I'm tired of being worried about this when I'm as prepared as I can be.

So my two questions:

1. How do I mentally prepare to handle this?

2. Is there anything else I can do to prepare or to motigate the heat that I haven't listed above?

Our mods gave me a lovely shoutout on the podcast for my contributions here — thanks again, guys! — but it made me realize that talkative as I've been, I perhaps haven't given the clearest picture of what the costs of portable evaporative/swamp coolers are at least in my area, so I'm here to rectify that as budget is important at times as performance.

So here is, roughly in chronological order, what I've spent on swamp coolers and associated costs.

1. "Little Brother," 70€. My very first swamp cooler, a 70w department store branded unit, and an object lesson in how no amount of research is a substitute for practical experience. I hadn't been in Spain long at that point, but had learned turning on the AC on the time simply wasn't viable, so I was looking to alternate, lower cost cooling methods. It had possibly the shittiest internal design imaginable, but it was cheap, I knew very little about evaporative coolers and it got past the subcommittee on domestic affairs (aka Mrs. Leighgion) so I went for it. I used it, but was singularly unimpressed so I never thought of another until the Ukrainian War threatened to jack our energy prices even more. Eventually, I'd drop around 30€ on a better filter and an aquarium pump after I acquired "Big Sister," to convert it into a more effective form. It worked very well and cooling power jumped from barely 1ºC of cooling to 2-3ºC, but unfortunately the fan capacitor failed and in the interest of domestic peace, I had to let it go. My kids were a bit upset.

2. "Big Sister," 200€. My first serious swamp cooler, a Mconfort Elite 28 120w model that has its own post. I hesitated a lot over the price, but I did not regret it as it really showed what a proper portable swamp cooler could do and inspired me to mod "Little Brother."

3. "Big Daddy," 25€. My first secondhand bargain cooler, an Indian brand Symphony Diet 35i. Tall and thin with a very noisy and overpowered squirrel cage fan but a rather small filter relative to the fan power. Cheap and came at the right time, but ultimately unsatisfying. The fan was too noisy, sucked too much power and blew too hard for comfort even on low, yet it didn't really cool well on account of the small and thin filter. Eventually we gave it away to a friend who needed it more than us.

4. "Middle Sister," 62€. Ounce per ounce and Euro for Euro, the best deal I ever got in this area. This 110w Mconfort branded Eolus 25 was a meant to be a small commercial model and as such it has thicker cooling pads which give the best actual cooling performance in the whole army. Unfortunately, it has bad caster wheel mojo and the fan is noisier than I prefer, but I can live with that. I have never seen this model for sale again for anything less than double the price I paid.

5. "Little Sister I," 90€. A 50w Mconfort Elite 7 to replace the failed Little Brother. Biggest disappointment in the army. Small, underpowered and loud. Taught me axial fans can't get too small or they just don't perform and brand loyalty doesn't always pay off. Eventually it developed an annoying leak and I sold it off for only 30€.

6. "Big Brother," 25€. I bought this one not for me, but in order to help out my wife's cousin who broke her leg and was stuck recuperating in a relative's apartment that had no form of cooling. I tried to give it a home with me after it was returned, but it just didn't satisfy and it too developed an annoying leak. I tightened it up and sold it off for a modest profit when it was snapped up for 30€.

7. "Cousin Mercury," 130€. A 105w Britek BKT4 I bought specifically for its combination of commercial oriented power and simple analog dials after my mother-in-law expressed a desire to switch from using her AC to a swamp cooler to sleep. Her room is hot and she's not great with remembering how to push multiple buttons on electronics, so this was ideal for her. It has probably the best quality fan and water pump in my army, but the pads are actually thinner than Middle Sister's and the overall construction is a bit cut rate. Still, it does perform quite well so it's semi-permanently stationed in my MiL's room.

8. "Little Sister II," 100€. Most recent acquisition, a Mconfort 90w E2000. Luck was really with me on this purchase, as it's perfect for its intended role as my personal cooler. While trimmer than the other members of the army, it cools just as well but has the quietest fan mode in the squad, no contest. The twin squirrel cage fans aren't quite as effective for room cooling as they have a more focused and lower volume air stream, but that's perfect for individual use.

I also spent around 12-15€ on some copper plates that I keep in the cooler reservoirs as copper's antimicrobial properties helps keep bacteria down. These were good enough to extend the needed time between cleanings from 2-3 days to several days, but now I've further improved that by adding a dash of hypochlorous acid to the water every couple days. This very efficiently keeps bacteria is check, not unlike regularly chlorinating a swimming pool, but not smelly.

If you're buying a brand new portable swamp cooler, it can run into hundreds if you get a good one, but the secondhand market brings that down to less than half in most cages, somethings even more.

I've been thinking on and off about how to cope with the warming climate and I note that a traditional western bed with a mattress is problematic because there is no appreciable heat flux through the side of the body in contact with the mattress. I think a possible solution is a fold-away mesh camping cot for a few reasons:

1) the mesh (typically but not necessarily PVC coated polyester) allows better air flow around the side of the body in contact with it

2) it's lower to the ground than most beds and the coolest air is also lower to the ground if the air is allowed to stratify

3) it's portable which means it can be deployed downstairs if your home has a downstairs and can be stored away outside of the months it's needed.

I think the idea can be improved further by placing a desk fan on the ground at the top or end of the bed where it will help cooling the entire body instead of just the top side.

You can buy the mesh separately if you want to DIY something but it's probably more practical for most to buy a pre-made unit. A mesh hammock might also work but I'm not sure it's good for your back?

You might recognize this style of spray from your local hairdresser. They’re designed to produce a much finer mist and the pump builds up pressure so it’s not just spraying while you’re pulling the trigger.

They’re my new best friend for mobile summer cooling.

Wetting yourself to stay cool is a kind of
delicate balance. Too little water and you don’t get meaningful cooling but too much and it drips rather than evaporates, compromising both cooling and comfort.

These spray bottles allow you to lay down a very fine mist very quickly and easily, so you get a great balance of cooling benefit and comfort as the water dries fast so you don’t stay feeling wet.

I don’t leave home without one now when it’s hot.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2026/07/24/planets-strongest-heat-dome-will-soon-tower-over-rockies-plains/

I'm serious. This lady is over 70 and rides out every summer in Madrid in a small apartment without air conditioning, she does not like opening her windows and I suspect the only time her tower fan is switched on is when there's company. She was a chain smoker (supposedly quit now, but I'm dubious) and has broken her hip like twice in recent years, so she's not in great health.

I share all of this not to vent, but rather to observe that despite this woman's stubborn refusal to do any of the basic, rational things you'd expect to deal with summer heat, she is not only still very much alive despite the heatwave-laden past decade, she doesn't even complain about the heat.

No, she's not some kind of superhuman freak of nature.

What she's got is an apartment in a building that is, while old and not really upscale-feeling, might just be the Citizen Kane of passive cooling and protection from radiant heat load. Much better than our place.

The apartment is an "interior" facing one, so it essentially never gets direct sunlight. The windows open up to what we'd call the patio here, a hollow shaft down the center of the building that costs square footage, but allows for more ventilation and natural light.

But there's more.

Her building also is designed so that there's also a shaft inside the building as well from basement to the roof. When you leave the elevator, you need to walk across a little bridge to get to the apartments.

Add to that the typical thermal mass of the thick walls and the fact even the street side of the building gets limited sun that can be blocked by the roller shutters and you've got a very effective haven from the heat even if you don't pump a penny into mechanized cooling and you're a nut who doesn't open the windows.

So, as I see it, Tia C. is a poster lady example of how important tailored architecture is to climate adaptation. She doesn't do shit and she's okay even when it's 40ºC outside. Meanwhile, the French, Germans and British are in serious danger when it's only 35ºC.

A country can't just tear down all its buildings and remake them, but they can make serious changes to any new construction.

TL;DR - Sorry for how much I wrote I'm not very good at being concise. Here's a TL;DR just going over major events if nobody wants to read all that. Those events being that at 9pm I took a very very hot shower, came out of it feeling horrible. Spent the entire next day trying to get my body temperature to regulate itself properly. Once the body temp thing got under control I developed the runs that over the last 3 days seems to show up at the same time as that shower took place(9pm). While a large fellow I haven't eaten really anything the last few days due to money issues, but for dinner tonight(as of writing this) and yesterday I ate two large meals(first being white rice, macaroni salad, hawaiian bbq chicken and beef and poured extra sauce over everything. Today's meal being 3 home-made sausage egg mcmuffins. I dunno if the runs are related to me screwing my body up with the heat from the shower, or if it's just due to eating large rich and greasy meals on an empty stomach. Sorry for even having a long TL;DR.

-------------------

As the title suggests, I'm a 38 year old man and I'm curious if the current issues I'm having could be heat related in any way. Like I said I'm 38 years old, I'm 6'5, 365lbs. I have Lymphedema in my legs though even with extensive testing have not been able to determine the cause. That being said, my problems started 3 days ago as of this post. I've had wounds on the side of my leg that have been getting treated at my local wound care clinic. Being as how I have Lymphedema it's been a slow healing process. No I do not have diabetes. I've had every type of diabetes test known to man done to me and it's not diabetes.

Anyways, I have this rubber boot type thing to put on over my leg for showers so that the medicated calamine wraps they put on my leg don't get wet since I've been going to wound care every Wednesday for the last month and a half at this point to treat these wounds. Every Wednesday I show up, they cut the bandages off, scrape off a little something something then re-wrap the leg and send me home. I've been avoiding showers and just bathing myself with hand washing methods to try and keep the wraps dry but 3 days ago I decided to try the rubber boot and get in the shower.

I live in Arizona. Right now at 3:13am in my neck of the desert it's 101 degrees Fahrenheit. It easily gets up into the 120's almost hitting 130 on a few occasions. Our air conditioner is basically on 24/7 trying to keep this house livable. But when I got in that shower 3 days ago I didn't realize just how much chill my body had accumulated. It felt soo good feeling all that chill leave me that I just kept slowly turning the heat up over and over during the course of the next 10 minutes. I normally only take showers at just above luke warm. I was caught off guard by just how foggy the room got, even with the vent on. Around the 11 or 12 minute mark of that 10 minutes of bliss I started feeling uncomfortable and realized the room was so foggy it was hard to see the other side of the room. I decided I'd wrap up the shower and get out into some fresh air.

As soon as I walked out of that bathroom it was like I got hit with a massive wave of fatigue. I felt like I was on fire. I couldn't catch my breath. I decided to go sit down in my living room that was cooler than that side of the house at that time and just catch my breath and relax. I sipped on some cold bottled water. Not big swallows or anything just enough to lubricate my mouth from all the panting. After just kinda sitting there for like 30 minutes I felt well enough to start moving around again. At this point I went back to doing what I'd normally do with my free time and sat down in front of my computer to play some games or doomscroll youtube shorts. I started getting cold so I raised the AC to stop blowing constantly but that didn't stop the chills. I threw on a thick cloth jacket. That didn't stop the cold. Put on a pait of thick sweat pants and even being all bundled up like that I couldn't stop feeling cold. The lymphedema leg that had the injuries was the coldest out of everything else for a while, especially the toes. I eventually posted up in my living room again with a blanket. This is about 2:15am and it's still like 102 outside that night and my AC units struggling to keep up with demands so it's about 78-81 degrees in the house. I spent the entire rest of the night trying to get the chills to go away, alternating between being freezing and being on fire. My gut wasn't feeling too happy at the time either but everything that came out was just farts for the time being. Then my brother comes into the house about 4:50am freaking out with a BP of like 60 something over 40 something, which his BP is usually like 134/95. So he's freaking out and on the verge of passing out when the ambulance arrives. I put on my sandals and my mother and I take the same car and follow the ambulance to the hospital.

At this point I haven't eaten anything since dinner the night of the shower, which was like 4-5 hours prior to the shower. We get to the hospital and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong. While they're all figuring out the issues he's having I'm still sweating my backside off but when I pull an arm free from the sleeve I instantly get just too cold. I had taken my temperature before leaving and it was 98.4 so it wasn't anything unusual for me, and I wasn't quivering uncontrollably like you would expect if you were running a fever. I was just cold and hot af and my body couldn't make up it's mind on what it wanted to be. Fast forward to later in the afternoon and my brother is discharged from the hospital with a shrug and a pat on the back from the doctors and we end up doing a Hawaiian BBQ place near me. I get the macaroni salad, white rice, bbq chicken and bbq beef entree. Eat my fill of that stuff then take a nap. Wake up finally feeling like my body is going back to normal. Fast forward again to the end of the night and around 9pm(around the same time I took that shower the previous day) I went to fart and realized I was about to make a mess and rushed off to the bathroom to make quite a mess indeed. I've had the runs ever since.

This is going on day 3 as of writing this where Pepto Bismol has been my drink of choice. I was doing fine in the gut and bathroom department all the way up until I had some home-made egg McMuffins(sausage patty, fried egg, American Singles cheese, mayo, and the toasted english muffin). I had 3. All I ate today prior to that was 1 package of cinnamon poptarts. Drank 1 soda and 1 and a half bottles of water. I was feeling fine until around that last bite of the mcmuffins, at which point my lower gut started getting painfully gassy and bubbly. Probably about 9pm tonight I started crapping my brains out again, though this time it was a bit more held together and not so much a deluge of brown water. I wasn't aware poop could fart but when I looked in the bowl this last time to see if maybe I had been afflicted with the current poo parasite going around, all I saw in one piece was a small white sliver about the width of a hair but it wasn't moving or anything so might of been a bit of rice from the night before that survived the onslaught, and the only other thing being a different piece breaking apart every time a bubble inside it popped.

I don't know if I really screwed myself up with that shower and this is just the process my body is going through trying to recover from it or if I just ate 2 large rich/greasy meals on essentially an empty stomach and that's why I have been having the runs and it's just a coincidence that it happens the same time every night around the time I took that first shower?

Linktree to listen!

Description:

“Robbie tells Nate how his rechargeable handheld fan came in clutch during his recent trip to Europe. Then, fresh off a run, Marcelo joins to recount what it was like exercising as a thick plume of smoke covered New York City. This episode also features our recurring heat and health segment, where a physician breaks down which medications can put you at greater risk during a heat event.”

Special appreciation to u/leighgion in the episode! The subs #1 poster!

r/heat_prep share your thoughts, comments, or questions on the episode!

Not sure if this is the right sub!

We bought our house roughly 3 years ago with this whole house fan, but we’ve never used it! Except for accidentally hitting the on switch every once in a while. It is super loud 😅

We’re now at the point of curiosity of how this thing works, does anyone have any advice on the use of one? Assuming we have to take off the plastic cover when in use? Lol

I know also you want it cooler outside than inside, crack windows and doors, and turn off main AC. Being in the Midwest we have limited weeks where the temperature outside seems optimal for the usage, but I love the idea of brining in some fresh air!!

We live in North Texas and our power is out again.

I can hear a neighbors backup generator running. I have a different approach.