Russ Hubbard
Jan 4, 20212 min
COVID-19 is a horrid, disgusting, and frightening part of our daily lives. Wishing things would go back to the way they were is a wonderful notion but not reality. Somethings will return, and somethings will not return, but everything is altered in some capacity. How quickly we recover relates to how quickly we adapt to new realities and adopt new and more protective infection control processes.
Contamination control measures need to be introduced into any process that requires close human physical proximity. Many organizations have for years relied on large volumes of ice, wetted sheets, ice packs and other homemade heat casualty recovery methods. Now, in the post COVID-19 world these ad-hoc approaches to exertional heat injury and heat illness in general is inadequate.
Efforts are required to protect perishable and expendable emergency cooling products from contamination. This problem can be easily fixed.
PolarSkin Cooling products have been used by the U.S Military since 2014. The problem that PolarSkin fixed for the military was portability of rescue cooling supplies to remote training areas. By introducing PolarSkin to medic’s and cadre’s aid bags, the military could ensure that emergency cooling options were available at any time and any place. The same approach holds true for sanitation control. The military no longer had to launder sheets after each training session and reposition them for the next event.
PolarSkin Cooling products are engineered to rapidly offload excess heat from a heat casualty in the same way that a cooler full of ice and water would be used to soak an overheated person. Visualize very large and flexible sheets of ice. Ice Sheets packaged under vacuum in sanitary and durable MIL-PRF 131-K vapor barrier pouches small enough to fit in a pocket. Simply store the PolarSkin cooling products in a cold place like a fridge or freezer. Before practice or training they can simply be removed and packed along with other first-aid items. Hopefully, at the end of the activity the products have NOT been used. Just put them back in the freezer.
One of the great unknown’s is if Covid-19 leads to higher incidents of heat stroke, heat exhaustion, or other heat related illnesses. Time will tell but, in the meantime, we train on. #heatstroke #heatstrokehelp #beingcooltosavealife #heatstrokemedic