Heart-rate response to forest harvesting work in the south-eastern United States during summer

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Abstract
The physiological workload of forest harvesting workers during summer in the south-eastern USA was evaluated by measuring work heat-rate response. The harvesting tasks considered were chainsaw felling, cable skidding, bucking and trimming at the landing, knuckle-broom loader operation, feller-buncher operation and grapple skidding. .ovrhdot.VO2 max [O2 uptake] of the workers ranged from 28 to 53 ml/min per kg. The WBGT [wet-bulb globe-temperature] ranged from 20 to 34.4.degree. C during data collection. The task time-weighed, aged-corrected, percent maximum heart-rate response ranged from 42.5 to 69.2%. Evidently, the manual and semi-mechanized tasks are potentially stressful and hotter environmental conditions increase the likelihood of higher heart-rate responses. No relationship was found between heart-rate response and three measures of static muscle strength.