Cold-Related Hazards: Prevention and Risk Factors
Prevention
- Research climate, forecast and daily temperature ranges for your location.
- Remember the simple acronym COLD:
COVER - Wear a hat or other protective covering to prevent body heat from escaping from your head, face and neck. Cover your hands with mittens instead of gloves.
OVEREXERTION - Avoid activities that would cause you to sweat a lot. The combination of wet clothing and cold weather can cause you to lose body heat more quickly.
LAYERS - Wear loose fitting, layered, lightweight clothing. Outer clothing made of tightly woven, water-repellent material is best for wind protection. Wool, silk or polypropylene inner layers hold body heat better than cotton does.
DRY - Stay as dry as possible. Get out of wet clothing as soon as possible. Be especially careful to keep your hands and feet dry, as it's easy for snow to get into mittens and boots.
Risk Factors
- Young age or old age: Being an infant or older adult, both of whom may have a harder time producing and retaining body heat.
- Exposure/Immersion: Exposure to cold weather or immersion in cold water.
- Clothing: Wearing clothes that aren't warm enough for weather conditions or being unable to get out of wet clothes or move to a warm, dry location.
- Certain drugs:
- Medications
- Alcohol and drug use. It may make your body feel warm inside, but it causes your blood vessels to expand, resulting in more rapid heat loss from the surface of your skin. The body's natural shivering response is diminished in people who've been drinking alcohol. In addition, the use of alcohol or recreational drugs can affect your judgment about the need to get inside or wear warm clothes in cold-weather conditions. If a person is intoxicated and passes out in cold weather, he or she is likely to develop hypothermia.
- Smoking
- Medical Conditions: Certain medical conditions affect your ability to feel or respond to cold, such as dehydration, excessive sweating, exhaustion, diabetes and poor blood flow in your limbs.
- Previous frostbite or cold injury
- Location: Being at high altitude, which reduces the oxygen supply to your skin.
- Fear, panic or mental illness, if it inhibits good judgment or hampers your ability to respond to cold.