The association between overall health, psychological distress, and occupational heat stress among a large national cohort of 40,913 Thai workers
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Occupational heat stress is a well-known problem, particularly in tropical countries, affecting workers, health and well-being. There are very few recent studies that have reported on the effect of heat stress on mental health, or overall health in workers, although socioeconomic development and rapid urbanization in tropical developing countries like Thailand create working conditions in which heat stress is likely. OBJECTIVE: This study is aimed at identifying the relationship between self-reported heat stress and psychological distress, and overall health status in Thai workers. RESULTS: 18% of our large national cohort (>40,000 subjects) often works under heat stress conditions and males are exposed to heat stress more often than females. Furthermore, working under heat stress conditions is associated with both worse overall health and psychological distress (adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.49 to 1.84). CONCLUSIONS: This association between occupational heat stress and worse health needs more public health attention and further development on occupational health interventions as climate change increases Thailand's temperatures.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Heat stress exposure has been identified as a contributor to chronic health problems, such as psychological distress and cardiovascular and kidney diseases.
“Additionally, heat stress exposure has been identified as a contributor to chronic health problems, such as psychological distress (Smith et al., 1997; Tawatsupa et al., 2010) and cardiovascular (Vangelova et al., 2006) and kidney diseases (Tawatsupa et al., 2012; Luo et al., 2014).”
From Assessment of Heat Stress Exposure among Construction Workers in the Hot Desert Climate of Saudi Arabia (2019) · cites this paper as Tawatsupa et al., 2010
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Anderson, C. A. (2001) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/1467-8721.00109 · Cited by 424 · see citing works
Climate change, direct heat exposure, health and well-being in low and middle-income countries
(2009) · Global Health Action · doi:10.3402/gha.v2i0.1958 · Cited by 133 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 15
- [2]Kovats R Campbell-Lendrum D Matthies F Climate change and human health: estimating avoidable deaths and disease Risk Anal 2005 25 1409 18 16506971
- [3]McMichael A McGeehin Mirabelli M The potential impacts of climate variability and change on temperature-related morbidity and mortality in the United States Environ Health Perspect 2001 9 185 9 PMC1240665 11359685
- [4]Martens W Climate change, thermal stress and mortality changes Soc Sci Med 1998 46 331 44 9460815
- [7]Kjellstrom T Gabrysch S Lemke B Dear K The “Hothaps” program for assessing climate change impacts on occupational health and productivity: an invitation to carry out field studies Global Health Action 2009 2 Available from: http://www.globalhealthaction.net/index.php/gha/article/view/2082/2561 [cited 19 April 2010] PMC2799255 20052425
- [8]Rosenstock L Cullen M Textbook of clinical occupational and environmental medicine 1994 New York W.B. Saunders Company
- [11]Schneider J Identification and management of thermal stress and strain 1999 Paper presented at Queensland Mining Industry Health and Safety Conference Proceedings, Central Queensland University
- [13]Limsakul A Limjirakan S Sriburi T Trends in daily temperature extremes in Thailand 2009 Paper presented at the Second National Conference on Natural Resources and Environment, Bangkok, Thailand
- [15]Berry HL Bowen K Kjellstrom T Climate change and mental health: a causal pathways framework Int J Public Health 2010 55 123 32 20033251
- [16]Sleigh A Seubsman S Bain C Thai cohort team Cohort profile: the Thai cohort of 87,134 open university students Int J Epidemiol 2008 37 266 72 17911153
- [18]Lennon MC Work conditions as explanations for the relation between socioeconomic status, gender, and psychological disorders Epidemiol Rev 1995 17 120 7 8521930
- [19]Lotrakul M Suicide in Thailand during the period 1998–2003 Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2006 60 90 5 16472364
- [20]Hansen A Bi P Nitschke M Ryan P Pisaniello D Tucker G The effect of heat waves on mental health in a temperate Australian city Environ Health Perspect 2008 116 1369 75 18941580 PMC2569097
- [21]Ramsey JD Task performance in heat: a review Ergonomics 1995 38 154 65 7875117
- [23]Page LA Hajat S Kovats RS Relationship between daily suicide counts and temperature in England and Wales Br J Psychiatry 2007 191 106 12 17666493
- [24]Kelly M Strazdins L Dellora T Seubsman S Sleigh A Thailand's work and health transition Int Labour Rev 2010 (in press, accepted October 2009) PMC3272465 22318916
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Kjellstrom, T., Briggs, D., Freyberg, C., Lemke, B., Otto, M., & Hyatt, O. (2016) · Annual Review of Public Health · doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032315-021740 · Cited by 617 · see citing works
Self-citationFlouris, A. D., Dinas, P. C., Ioannou, L. G., Nybo, L., Havenith, G., Kenny, G. P., & Kjellstrom, T. (2018) · The Lancet Planetary Health · doi:10.1016/s2542-5196(18)30237-7 · Cited by 579 · see citing works
Self-citationClimate Change and Mental Health: A Scoping Review
Charlson, F., Ali, S., Benmarhnia, T., Pearl, M., Massazza, A., Augustinavicius, J., & Scott, J. G. (2021) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph18094486 · Cited by 507 · see citing works
Health Impacts of Workplace Heat Exposure: An Epidemiological Review
XIANG, J., BI, P., PISANIELLO, D., & HANSEN, A. (2014) · Industrial Health · doi:10.2486/indhealth.2012-0145 · Cited by 393 · see citing works
Mental health effects of climate change
Padhy, S., Sarkar, S., Panigrahi, M., & Paul, S. (2015) · Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine · doi:10.4103/0019-5278.156997 · Cited by 238 · see citing works
Xiang, J., Bi, P., Pisaniello, D., Hansen, A., & Sullivan, T. (2014) · Occupational and Environmental Medicine · doi:10.1136/oemed-2013-101584 · Cited by 155 · see citing works
Al-Bouwarthan, M., Quinn, M. M., Kriebel, D., & Wegman, D. H. (2019) · Annals of Work Exposures and Health · doi:10.1093/annweh/wxz033 · Cited by 144 · see citing works
Siu, G. E., Seeley, J., & Wight, D. (2013) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.04.025 · Cited by 142 · see citing works
Mental Health Impacts of Climate Change Among Vulnerable Populations Globally: An Integrative Review
White, B. P., Breakey, S., Brown, M. J., Smith, J. R., Tarbet, A., Nicholas, P. K., & Ros, A. M. V. (2023) · Annals of Global Health · doi:10.5334/aogh.4105 · Cited by 141 · see citing works
Heat impact on schoolchildren in Cameroon, Africa: potential health threat from climate change
Dapi, L. N., Rocklöv, J., Nguefack-Tsague, G., Tetanye, E., & Kjellstrom, T. (2010) · Global Health Action · doi:10.3402/gha.v3i0.5610 · Cited by 55 · see citing works
Self-citationThe evolution of the evidence base for observed impacts of climate change
Hansen, G. (2015) · Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability · doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2015.05.005 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Tawatsupa, B., Lim, L.-Y., Kjellstrom, T., Seubsman, S.-A., Sleigh, A., & The Thai Cohort Study team
- Affiliations
- Australian National University (AU)
- National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University
- Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (TH)
- Corresponding author
- Tawatsupa, Benjawan
- Venue
- Global Health Action
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2010-05-13
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 1654-9716 (ISSN-L)
- 1654-9880
- PMC
- PMC2871739
- OpenAlex
- W2018090107
- Cited by
- 143
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 31.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Global Health Action (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (268055)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Occupational Health and Safety in Workplaces
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Thermoregulation and physiological responses
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Workplace Health and Well-being
- Keywords
- occupational heat stress, psychological distress, overall health, workers, mental health, sex differences, climate change, occupational health, Thailand
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
