Methods to calculate the heat index as an exposure metric in environmental health research.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Environmental health research employs a variety of metrics to measure heat exposure, both to directly study the health effects of outdoor temperature and to control for temperature in studies of other environmental exposures, including air pollution. To measure heat exposure, environmental health studies often use heat index, which incorporates both air temperature and moisture. However, the method of calculating heat index varies across environmental studies, which could mean that studies using different algorithms to calculate heat index may not be comparable.

Objective and methods

We investigated 21 separate heat index algorithms found in the literature to determine a) whether different algorithms generate heat index values that are consistent with the theoreti

SUBMITTER: Anderson GB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3801457 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature