Safety

“Clo” is not a girl’s name…

Delf Freezerwear, Other Products, Safety /

“Clo” is not a girl’s name and in the application I want to discuss, it doesn’t mean Chief Learning officer either. In this instance it means clothing value and represents the amount of insulation afforded by different clothing in different situations. Fig 2/20 Insulation values of different kind of clothing (1 clo = 0.155 m²K/W). This clothing value scale was thought up by the US military in World War 2 to differentiate between the clothing required in the different theatres of war.  Sending an army to the Aleutian islands in tropical gear for example wouldn’t help to promote military efficiency. The equivalent British term, just to be different, is “togs” and one clo is equal to 1.55 togs. A male will be comfortable ie, at homeostasis, in clothing with the combined insulation of 1 clo where he is sitting in an office with a temperature of 21⁰Celcius and an air speed of 100mms per second at 50% humidity.  This describes your mythical office worker. Cold store workers, depending on the amount of work they do, require clothing with a clo value of approximately 3 to 5 clo at minus 25⁰ Celsius depending on air flow, which translates here to wind chill. A cold store worker who is not dressed correctly will not achieve homeostasis, a core temperature of approximately 37⁰ Celsius, and will begin to feel cold.  The process of getting cold will make him uncomfortable and his body will automatically try and generate additional heat to return his core temperature to 37⁰.  To do this it will start shivering and then restrict blood flow to the arms and legs, also known as vascoconstriction.  If a worker’s core temperature falls to around 36⁰ he can no longer count accurately which is important to know if you are doing a stock count in a freezer store. The common practice of providing warm up rooms for cold store workers where they are supposed to spend 10 minutes every hour is actually self-defeating.  Blood starts flowing to the arms and legs and returns relatively colder to the core.  After the 10 minute warm up, the worker’s core temperature will probably be lower than it was when he started his warm up.  Every time he “warms up” he is actually reducing his core temperature even further.  For productivity in freezer stores it makes sense to provide the correct tested clothing which will allow the worker to achieve and maintain homeostasis. Keep your staff comfortable when working at sub-zero temperatures by clothing them in the best prossible protective wear.  Delf Coldwear is supplied to South African Coldstores by Barpro Storage. James Cunningham

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Don’t dehydrate

Safety /

James Cunningham recently gave a health and safety talk on “salt.” While too much salt can be detrimental to the human body, he said, too little is just as bad. The term salt itself is an inclusive term including potassium, magnesium and sodium salts. Heavy work or exercise in warm summer temperatures can quickly deplete your body’s salt levels. This will make you feel tired or “washed out” and your muscles will tend to cramp. Dehydration cannot be cured by simply drinking water. There must be the correct salt mixture in the water to allow the body to rehydrate. Sweet drinks are not a healthy solution and James suggested that, in hot conditions, employees drank water plus an alternative mouthful of a proper rehydrate solution.Cyclists, he continued, need to be especially careful as they often do not notice their level of perspiration. Severe loss of potassium salts coupled to dehydration can result in an avoidable heart attack.

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A quick look at house keeping in an Australian coldstore

Safety /

The photos were taken at an ice cream store in Melbourne. The actual cold stores were erected in the late 1970’s, so the facility is older than most South African cold stores.Note the following: 1. Strip curtain has no broken strips. 2. There is no ice in the doorway. 3. An “Albany” high speed door is also in use. 4. Fire extinguisher next to the door way. 5. Safety signs 6. Emergency torch. 7. The manager is wearing a high visibility vest and safety shoes. 8. Safety bollards.  In Australia, pedestrians must walk in defined walk ways which must be protected from forklifts and other materials handling equipment.  In this photograph the pedestrian route crosses one used by forklifts, ie a freezer doorway. Pedestrians must open a safety gate before walking in front of the freezer door. When the gate is opened a limit switch activates a red light inside the store so that forklift drivers working there know a pedestrian is in the doorway area. Inside the cold store working area, additional protection is given to pedestrians by placing a fixed rack in front of the walkway. In other places crash barriers are used instead.  Wire mesh covers the back of the fixed rack to prevent pallets from being pushed through the rack and onto pedestrians. Pedestrian walkways continue outside the working area.  Pedestrians can walk between the yellow lines. When they walk between the red lines they are in a danger area and must pay extra attention. This shows an employee stacking cases, coming from a blast freezer, onto a pallet. The pallet is placed on a platform which lowers itself as the cases are stacked, so the employee is always working at an optimum height to protect his back. There are two platforms so that he can start loading the second pallet while the completed one is waiting for a forklift to take it away. He is wearing ear muffs for noise protection as well as cold store protective clothing. Cold store is using a “man on” machine.  They are more manoeuvrable than a counterbalance forklift and they allow an employee to get on and off quickly making him more productive, ie he can check as well as move pallets.Note the steel mesh protection on the overhead guard as well as the crash barrier in the back ground which defines and protects the pedestrian walk way. The Cold store generally was in a spotless condition and employees were complying with the health and safety rules. I have visited no South African cold stores that come close to these standards.

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