Zare Mansoor, Dehghan Habibollah, Yazdanirad Saeid, Khoshakhlagh Amir Hossein
Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Health, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
School of Health, Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Shahrekord, Iran.
Saf Health Work. 2019 Jun;10(2):219-223. doi: 10.1016/j.shaw.2019.01.004. Epub 2019 Jan 19.
Ice cooling vests can cause tissue damage and have no flexibility. Therefore, these two undesirable properties of ice cooling vest were optimized, and the present study was aimed to compare the impact of the optimized ice cooling vest and a commercial paraffin cooling vest on physiological and perceptual strain under controlled conditions.
For optimizing, hydrogel was used to increase the flexibility and a layer of the ethylene vinyl acetate foam was placed into the inside layer of packs to prevent tissue damage. Then, 15 men with an optimized ice cooling vest, with a commercial paraffin cooling vest, and without a cooling vest performed tests including exercise on a treadmill (speed of 2.8 km/hr and slope of %0) under hot (40C) and dry (40 %) condition for 60 min. The physiological strain index and skin temperature were measured every 5 and 15 minutes, respectively. The heat strain score index and perceptual strain index were also assessed every 15 minutes.
The mean values of the physiological and perceptual indices differed significantly between exercise with and without cooling vests (P < 0.05). However, the difference of the mean values of the indices except the value of the skin temperature during the exercises with the commercial paraffin cooling vest and the optimized ice cooling vest was not significant (P > 0.05).
The optimized ice cooling vest was as effective as the commercial paraffin cooling vest to control the thermal strain. However, ice has a greater latent heat and less production cost.
冰冷却背心会导致组织损伤且缺乏灵活性。因此，对冰冷却背心的这两个不良特性进行了优化，本研究旨在比较优化后的冰冷却背心与市售石蜡冷却背心在受控条件下对生理和感知应激的影响。
为了进行优化，使用水凝胶来增加灵活性，并在冰袋内层放置一层乙烯醋酸乙烯酯泡沫以防止组织损伤。然后，15名男性分别穿着优化后的冰冷却背心、市售石蜡冷却背心以及不穿冷却背心，在炎热（40℃）和干燥（40%）的条件下于跑步机上进行测试（速度为2.8千米/小时，坡度为0%），持续60分钟。分别每隔5分钟和15分钟测量生理应激指数和皮肤温度。每隔15分钟还评估热应激评分指数和感知应激指数。
有冷却背心和无冷却背心运动时生理和感知指标的平均值差异显著（P < 0.05）。然而，在穿着市售石蜡冷却背心和优化后的冰冷却背心运动期间，除皮肤温度值外，其他指标平均值的差异不显著（P > 0.05）。
优化后的冰冷却背心在控制热应激方面与市售石蜡冷却背心同样有效。然而，冰具有更大的潜热且生产成本更低。
