Dr. Jo Anne Balanay was featured in an article published in the June/July 2024 issue of Synergist, the official publication of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). The article introduces the upcoming new AIHA Heat Stress Mobile App that is based on the wet-bulb-globe temperature (WBGT) app prototype that was developed by her and Dr. Sinan Sousan (Assistant Professor, ECU Department of Public Health) at ECU.

“…Balanay and Sinan Sousan, an assistant professor at ECU who had experience in coding, participated in an app development training program at the university. Through connections made at the event, Balanay and Sousan received funding from ECU to create a web app prototype that used what’s known as the Liljegren algorithm, developed by Argonne National Laboratory, to compute WBGT from weather data.”

The article also mentioned about the published study by Dr. Balanay and Danielle Dillane (MS Environmental Health alum) that started this pursuit of developing a heat stress app that is based on the WBGT index, instead of the heat index.

“Balanay is the coauthor of a study, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene in 2020, that assessed the accuracy of the OSHA/NIOSH Heat Safety Tool… Balanay and coauthor Danielle Dillane assigned each logged WBGT value to one of the five risk levels designated by the Heat Safety Tool. By comparing the WBGT data to the Heat Safety Tool output, Balanay and Dillane could determine how often the tool’s risk levels agreed with risk levels derived by WBGT.”

The features of the initial release of the app were described, including it capability to forecast the WBGT index for up to five days. The target release of the app is mid-July 2024. Access the Synergist article to learn more: Introducing the AIHA Heat Stress Mobile App.