Cooling vests aim to help migrant workers weather Middle East’s heat

BEIRUT: In the United Arab Emirates and some other sweltering parts of the Middle East, summer temperatures can hit 45 degrees Celsius, with brutal humidity making conditions feel even hotter. Such heat can make working nearly unbearable — or even deadly — for the Gulf’s legions of migrant construction workers.

But simple cooling vests, tweaked for use in the region by a University of Toronto student, could help save lives as climate change brings increasing summer heat.

“I wanted something that was feasible for construction firms to implement, that was low-cost and that would offer the preventative protection that we wanted for workers,” said Adam Sheikh, 20, the founder of aegis, a non-profit that is introducing the cooling vests in the Gulf.

The vests are submerged in cool water for about a minute, then gently squeezed to wring out excess liquid. Once on a worker’s body they act like a sponge, providing cooling for hours as the water slowly evaporates, Sheikh said.

An early version of the vests was tested in Qatar last year and this summer in Dubai by global contractor Multiplex, which has 200 of its workers wearing them. Company officials say finding a way to keep workers cool enough is a problem. “For this region, it’s a geographical challenge for us to manage heat stress,” Stephen Smith, executive director of safety at Multiplex, said from Dubai.

But after using the vests for about three months this summer, most of the workers reported feeling cooler and having more energy, Smith said.

One of them, Lijo Stephen, 26, sweats less and has “noticed the cooling effect” on his body, the company quoted him as saying in a statement. On-site nurses are tracking blood pressure, heart rates and other measurements among the workers, as well as gathering feedback from them. — Reuters