2007, Piran, Slovenia

Environmental Ergonomics XII
Igor B. Mekjavic, Stelios N. Kounalakis & Nigel A.S. Taylor (Eds.), © BIOMED, Ljubljana 2007
insufficient clothing insulation (Iclr < IREQmín). The opposite situation is also frequent as in a
number of workplaces the selected clothing ensemble provides too much insulation
(Iclr>IREQneutral). The analysis of the relationships between the resultant clothing insulation
and the required clothing insulation, for both IREQneutral and IREQmin criteria, shows that the
actual increase shown by Iclr is still far away from the ideal conditions depicted by both IREQ
growing rates. Therefore, further attention must be given to these issues in order to carefully
adapt the choice of clothing according to the activity and to the work environment.
IREQneutral, IREQmin, Iclr [clo ]
596
3,0
2,5
2,0
1,5
1,0
0,5
0,0
Ambient temperature Refrigerating chambers Freezing chambers
IREQneutral IREQmin Iclr-Milk food industry
Iclr-Fish industry Iclr-Meat industry Iclr-Food conservation industrial units
Iclr-Food distribuiton industrial units Iclr-Pharmaceutical distribution industrial units
Workplace
Figure 2. IREQneutral, IREQmin and Iclr values in each workplace.
The relationship between DLE and IREQ is represented in Figure 3 where the higher values of
IREQ are seen to correspond to the lower values of DLE. The IREQ ranged between 0,86 and
2,63 clo while the DLE variation was between 0,42 and 6,41 hours. In addition, a clear
distinction can be pointed out between freezing and refrigerating cold chambers. The results
show that the refrigerating chambers led to higher DLE values and lower IREQ values, while
the freezing stores are characterised by a higher level of strain, hence lower duration limited
exposures and higher demands in terms of clothing insulation.
Figure 4 summarizes the present survey and shows that in the majority of workplaces the
selected clothing insulation provides more than sufficient protection (Iclr>IREQneutral).
Nevertheless, the percentage of workplaces that have shown situations of Iclr < IREQmín is
also significant, particularly in the fish industry. This fact and the reports made during the
visits to the five fish industries analysed, in which the authors could realise that the time of
exposure in the freezing chambers are sometimes very significant and usually exceeds the
DLE, support the conclusion that the fish industry is probably the most critical one. Thus,
particular attention should be given to this activity sector, even more because situations where
the cooling of extremities may appear are also quite frequent.