"Would it kill you to shovel the front walk?" A monster snowstorm raging from New Mexico to Maine raises this question afresh. Typically it's posed by a woman standing with hands on hips and assuming a Thurberesque mien as she gazes down on a man exercising his thumb on the remote but otherwise in repose. The correct answer: "It might." 
 
 Snow-shovel design may not rank up there with the Three Gorges Dam as an engineering challenge, but it kills more than 10 times as many people each year. My Slate colleague Juliet Lapidos has observed that the 1,200 annual heart-failure deaths attributed to blizzards represent only about 0.3 percent of all annual deaths from heart disease. But that's a lot more people than die from watching a football game (though that poses health risks too). You can say all these shovelers should exercise more, and that's certainly true. But such advice is of little help to a sedentary soul whose doorstep is suddenly buried in a four-foot drift. 
 
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 The science of shoveling was invented by the Progressive Era efficiency expert (and father of Taylorism) Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor observed laborers shoveling varying weights and concluded that the shovel load with which "a first class man would do his biggest day's work" was about 21 pounds. That's remarkably close to the current recommendation from Canada's Center for Occupational Health and Safety (keep per-shovel snow loads below 24 pounds). At the Bethlehem Steel works in Pennsylvania, Taylor gave out shovels specifically designed to hold 21 pounds—small ones for shoveling iron ore, big ones for shoveling ash—and made "thousands of stop-watch observations" to calculate the most efficient shoveling method. 
 
 Taylor's purpose was not to preserve workers' health but to maximize output; by following his recommendations, Bethlehem was able to increase the daily weight shoveled by each laborer from 16 to 59 tons. But because physical endurance was a necessary component to maximizing output, Taylor's shoveling method also reduced wear and tear on the human body. "[T]his is not nigger driving," Taylor said (that's how Progressives talked in 1911); "this is kindness; this is teaching; this is doing what I would like mighty well to have done to me if I were a boy trying to learn how to do something." He recommended that workers 
 
 press the forearm hard against the upper part of the right leg, just below the thigh … take the end of the shovel in your right hand and when you push the shovel into the pile, instead of using the muscular effort of your arms, which is tiresome, throw the weight on the body of the shovel … [T]hat pushes your shovel in the pile with hardly any exertion and without tiring the arms in the least. 
 
 Reading Taylor's recommendations, one is struck by two significant changes in American life. One is that 100 years later African-Americans are considered human beings whose physical well-being concerns society (at least in theory) as much as that of Caucasians. The other change is that, even taking into account that Taylor's subjects were all experienced manual laborers, people must have had much stronger backs back then. 
 
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 Every winter, about 100 people in the US die while shovelling snow. Why? 
 
 A study looking at data from 1990 to 2006 by researchers at the US Nationwide Children's Hospital recorded 1,647 fatalities from cardiac-related injuries associated with shovelling snow. In Canada, these deaths make the news every winter. 
 
 Cardiologist Barry Franklin, an expert in the hazardous effects of snow removal, believes the number of deaths could be double that. "I believe we lose hundreds of people each year because of this activity," says Franklin, director of preventative cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation at William Beaumont Hospital, Michigan. 
 
 His team found that when healthy young men shovelled snow, their heart rate and blood pressure increased more than when they exercised on a treadmill. "Combine this with cold air, which causes arteries to constrict and decrease blood supply, you have a perfect storm for a heart attack," he says. 
 
 The Answer raises blood pressure and heart rate more than some other forms of exercise 
 
 cold air constricts blood vessels 
 
 cardiac risks are higher in early morning 
 
 rare exercise for sedentary over-55s 
 
 Snow shovelling is particularly strenuous because it uses arm work, which is more taxing than leg work. Straining to move wet and heavy snow is particularly likely to cause a surge in heart rate and blood pressure, Franklin says. 
 
 Many people hold their breath during the hard work, which also puts a strain on the body. In addition, the prime time for snow clearance is between 6am and 10am which is when circadian fluctuations make us more vulnerable to heart attacks. 
 
 Franklin considers snow shovelling to be so dangerous that he advises anyone over the age of 55 not to do it. 
 
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 "People at greatest risk are those who are habitually sedentary with known or suspected coronary disease, who go out once a year to clear snow," he says, adding that smoking and being overweight drastically increase the risk. If you must do it, push rather than lift the snow, dress in layers, take regular breaks indoors and don't eat or smoke before shovelling, he advises. 
 
 Using a snow blower is a better option, but there have also been heart attacks recorded in men using blowers, including one fatality in Buffalo on Wednesday. "People don't have any idea how taxing it is on the heart," Franklin says. 
 
 Reporting by Jo Jolly 
 
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– If you live in America, there’s a good chance you’re shoveling snow today—or will be soon—but beware: The dreaded chore can actually kill you. How to avoid such a tragic fate? Well, for starters, keep your per-shovel load to 24 pounds or less. Beyond that, however, the recommendations get muddled, notes Timothy Noah on Slate: Shovels that make it easier to gather the snow make it harder to lift the snow, and vice versa. There is one obscure shovel supposedly better suited to both parts of the job, but good luck finding one in a hardware store. A few other things will lessen your risk: Don’t start shoveling while snow is still falling (it’s colder, so you’ll put additional strain on your heart); don’t bundle up too much (getting too hot isn’t good, either); and don’t drink coffee (it increases your heart rate) or hot cocoa (who knows why?) right before shoveling. If that all sounds like too much trouble, “wait till someone younger or poorer than you knocks on your door and offers to shovel your walk for $20 or $30,” Noah recommends. “Delegate. The economy will benefit and your cardiologist will thank you.”