VI. Energy expenditure and climatic exposure of Yemenite and Kurdish Jews in Israel

Abstract

The daily energy expenditure of Yemenite and Kurdish Jews has been assessed in summer and winter. The majority of the male subjects were engaged in farming; the women were mainly housewives. A timed activity survey was carried out on all subjects. The differences between summer and winter were, in general, small and the time spent by the men in different activities averaged for the two seasons were, for the Yemenite Jews 7.69 h lying, 7.16 h sitting, 7.6 h working. The Kurdish Jews spent 8.44 h lying, 6.4 h sitting and 7.4 h working. Energy expenditure was computed from the timed activity survey and measurements of oxygen consumption in a number of tasks. The energy expenditure of the men in the summer was 3 050 kcal (12760 kj) per day for both the Yemenite and the Kurdish Jews. In the winter, the Yemenite Jews expended 3000 kcal (12560 kj) and the Kurdish Jews 3110 kcal (13020 kj) per day. The Yemenite Jewish women expended 2280 kcal (9550 kj) per day in the summer and 2400 kcal (10040 kj) per day in the winter, and the Kurdish Jewish women expended 2250 kcal (9420 kj) per day in the summer and 2 390 kcal (10 000 kj) per day in the winter. Integrated heart rates were recorded in the two seasons, during the night and during the day. The night rates were significantly lower in the summer than in the winter. The average night rates were: summer, winter, beats/min beats/min Kurdish Jews men 56.3 60.9 women 63.0 70.6 Yemenite Jews men 60.4 65.6 women 66.6 70.5 The time spent out of doors in the daylight hours was 348 min/day in the summer and 347 min/day in the winter for the Yemenite Jewish men. The Kurdish Jewish men spent 401 min/day out of doors in the summer and 342 min/day out of doors in the winter. The Yemenite Jewish women were out of doors for 205 min/day in the summer and 243 min/day in the winter. The corresponding figures for the Kurdish Jewish women were 203 and 81 min/day.

Metabolic energy cost of workers in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, tourism, and transportation industries

“…Indirect calorimetry was employed as an EC assessment method in a total of 44 studies as follows: 14 studies in agriculture22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35 ) , 5 studies in construction36,37,38,39,40 ) , 14 studies in manufacturing23, 41, 42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51 ) (some papers include more than one study), and 13 studies in transportation22, 52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63 ) . The heart rate monitoring method was used to assess workers’ EC in 10 studies as follows: one study in the tourism industry64 ) , seven studies in the manufacturing industry65,66,67,68,69,70,71 ) , and two studies in the transportation industry72, 73 ) .…”

“…Even when this was not true, the participants, methods to assess EC, and precise job descriptions varied considerably between studies. For instance, as shown in Appendix Table 1, the job task “weeding” has been reported by Benedict22 ) during gardening, by Kahn25 ) during cereal farming, by Edholm34 ) during vineyard farming/viticulture, by Brun32 ) during cotton farming, by de Guzman60 ) during rice farming, as well as Costa33 ) during apple farming. It becomes evident that, even in this case—where several studies assessed the same job task—a forest plot weighing the different studies would be inappropriate.…”

“…The tasks included in this NACE code correspond to the job types assessed in 16 studies4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18 ) which monitored a total of 230 male and 155 female workers. The EC is reported for many tasks including weeding, mowing wheat, ploughing and threshing4,5,6, 18 ) , working with axe, milking by hand/machine, ploughing, grass cutting, hoeing, load carrying, cutting cane, cotton harvesting, tending animals, seeding, spraying and mowing7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, 18 ) , tractor driving, potato/orange picking, weeding, seeding, forking grass, harvesting, planting shoveling, plowing and spraying15, 16 ) , as well as grape-picking17 ) . The EC data of all the aforementioned tasks appear in an Appendix and were averaged to provide a single sex-specific EC for this NACE code (Table 2…”

Measurement of human energy expenditure, with particular reference to field studies: an historical perspective

“…Two reports claimed good correlations between recorded heart rates and respirometry values over a modest range of energy expenditures (5-25 kJ/min) (Goldsmith et al 1967;Heywood et al 1971). However, a third study admitted to the arbitrary expedient of accepting as trustworthy only night time counts in the range 40-90 beats/ min and daytime counts in the range 55-110 beats/min (Edholm et al 1973); application of this screening criterion excluded at least 25% of measurements. The Wolff apparatus was subsequently improved by the introduction of a series of integrating cells; these allowed the observer to exclude minutes when the counting rate was less than 50 beats/min or more than 200 beats/min (Baker et al 1969).…”

Delivery of occupant satisfaction in the House of Commons, 1950–2019

“…9 Barbara Tredre was an environmental physiologist undertaking research into indoor thermal comfort, the effect of climate on human metabolism and mental health (Tredre 1965(Tredre , 1973 According to readings recorded between 21 April and 11 June 1952, it varied between 65°F (18°C) and 71°F (21.6°C) near the floor, and between 67 and 71°F at roof level. At the floor, the temperature remained within the intended range of 66°F (19°C)-68.9°F (20.5°C) for 82% of the time, and for only 1% of this period readings > 70°F (21°C).…”