This study collected fundamental data on the current status of construction workers’ clothes in South Korea, and categorized it based on construction site environment and job position. The study was ...conducted via a survey of 102 construction workers comprising both managers and laborers. In addition, a detailed interview-based questionnaire was used to ask three workers at the construction site to adopt working postures and identify the most uncomfortable parts of their workwear. Construction working environments are influenced by seasonal changes and have been recognized as places where dangerous hazards may occur. Workers in the construction industry felt that their faces were the hottest parts of their bodies in summer and their hands were the coldest in winter. With respect to the clothing worn for work, the results showed that most managers wore company-supplied workwear but laborers did not. When personally purchasing workwear, managers bought items at outdoor shops, whereas laborers purchased theirs at local markets. Both laborers and managers indicated a need for new workwear designs with a greater emphasis on function. In the in-depth interviews, the respondents noted that they felt discomfort from the clothing in their backs, upper arms, thighs, knees, and hips as a result of their primary work postures. Furthermore, they noted the need for pockets of appropriate size and position according to their work. The functional requirements demanded from construction workwear were classified based on the study’s results.
The suitability, availability, and use of protective clothing are critical factors determining the actual dermal exposure (ADE) of operators and workers to pesticides. A realistic assessment of ...occupational exposure to pesticides requires information about the performance of protective clothing during everyday use. In this study, the performance of clothing or gloves has been investigated based on available dermal exposure data in order to provide recommendations for default protection factors that can be used in regulatory exposure assessments. Suitable dermal exposure data from available exposure databases were collated and analysed. The data that met the selection criteria for the analysis of the performance of protective clothing comprised studies in which protective clothing like cotton coveralls, cotton clothing, polyester-cotton coveralls, Sontara coveralls, Tyvek coveralls, butyl/neoprene gloves, latex/PE/vinyl/PVC gloves, or nitrile gloves were worn. Based on available potential and ADE levels, the migration of pesticides through this protective clothing was estimated. Evaluation of exposure data showed that on average only 2.3-2.6% of the pesticides present on the outside of the clothing or gloves migrated through the garments, although there was a large variation with migration up to 99%. Forearms, legs, and chest areas of the clothing tended to have the greatest migration of pesticides. Caution is needed in the selection of the appropriate protection offered protective clothing for specific situations. This study gives valuable information on the performance of protective clothing, for use in exposure assessment and for default setting in exposure modelling, taking into account the type of clothing or gloves worn. As new data become available, it may be possible to further refine the protection factors offered by different types of clothing or gloves, particularly where a common protocol has been used.
Workwears are required to maintain optimum performance during dangerous, exhausting activities (e.g. those involving the fire brigade or police). The purpose of the present study was to compare two ...workwears (A and B) composed of underwear and outerwear with different fiber blends (A: 100% aramid; B: combination of fire resistant (FR) viscose/merino wool underwear and FR viscose/aramid outerwear) during strenuous physical activity. In a climatic chamber (25℃, 50% RH) participants had to walk on a treadmill until exhaustion occurred. Weight measurements were made for calculating evaporation, sweat residue, and sweat distribution. Endurance performance was assessed by time to exhaustion. Core temperature, heart rate, lactate, thermal comfort, microclimate between skin and underwear, surface temperature of the outerwear, and perceived exertion were also measured. The tested workwears caused no significant differences in time to exhaustion, core temperature, and thermal comfort. Sweat distribution differed significantly in the workwears. The underwear of workwear B caused less moisture accumulation in the outerwear and this may be a beneficial safety feature for the prevention of hazardous burns of the skin. Moisture accumulation in the outerwear may reduce thermal insulation and increase the possibility of evaporation whereby hot steam may move to the skin. The potential protective feature of the FR viscose/merino wool blended underwear and the economical price of viscose support the use of fire resistant (FR) viscose blended fabrics in workwears.
The objective of this investigation was to achieve an understanding about the relationship between heat stress and performance limitation when wearing a two-layerfire-resistant light-weight workwear ...(full-clothed ensemble) compared to an one-layer short sports gear (semi-clothed ensemble) in an exhaustive, stressful situation under moderate thermal condition (25°C). Ten well trained male subjects performed a strenuous walking protocol with both clothing ensembles until exhaustion occurred in a climatic chamber. Wearing workwear reduced the endurance performance by 10% (p=0.007) and the evaporation by 21% (p=0.003), caused a more pronounced rise in core temperature during submaximal walking (0.7±0.3 vs. 1.2±0.4°C; p≤0.001) and from start till exhaustion (1.4±0.3 vs. 1.8±0.5°C; p=0.008), accelerated sweat loss (13±2 vs. 15±3gmin−1; p=0.007), and led to a significant higher heart rate at the end of cool down (103±6 vs. 111±7bpm; p=0.004). Correlation analysis revealed that core temperature development during submaximal walking and evaporation may play important roles for endurance performance. However, a critical core temperature of 40°C, which is stated to be a crucial factor for central fatigue and performance limitation, was not reached either with the semi-clothed or the full-clothed ensemble (38.3±0.4 vs. 38.4±0.5°C). Additionally, perceived exertion did not increase to a higher extent parallel with the rising core temperature with workwear which would substantiate the critical core temperature theory. In conclusion, increased heat stress led to cardiovascular exercise limitation rather than central fatigue.
•Light-weight workwear limited performance by 10% under moderate thermal condition.•Evaporation and core temperature played important roles for endurance performance.•Evaporation was reduced by 21% but critical core temperature (40°C) was not reached.•Sweat loss was accelerated and cardiovascular stress was higher during recovery.•Increased heat stress rather led to cardiovascular limitation than central fatigue.
UK Department of Health guidelines recommend that clinical staff are 'bare below the elbows'. There is a paucity of evidence to support this policy. One may hypothesise that absence of clothing ...around wrists facilitates more effective handwashing: this study aims to establish whether dress code affects bacterial colonisation before and after handwashing.
Sixty-six clinical staff volunteered to take part in the study, noting whether they were bare below the elbows (BBE) or not bare (NB). Using a standardised technique, imprints of left and right fingers, palms, wrists and forearms were taken onto mini agar plates. Imprints were repeated after handwashing. After incubation, colonies per plate were counted, and subcultures taken.
Thirty-eight staff were BBE and 28 were not. A total of 1112 plates were cultured. Before handwashing there was no significant difference in number of colonies between BBE and NB groups (Mann-Whitney, P < 0.05). Handwashing reduced the colony count, with greatest effect on fingers, palms and dominant wrists (t-test, P < 0.05). Comparing the two groups again after handwashing revealed no significant difference (Mann-Whitney, P < 0.05). Subcultures revealed predominantly skin flora.
There was a large variation in number of colonies cultured. Handwashing resulted in a statistically significant reduction in colony count on fingers, palms and dominant wrist regardless of clothing. We conclude that handwashing produces a significant reduction in number of bacterial colonies on staff hands, and that clothing that is not BBE does not impede this reduction.
Industrial safety has become a topic of great concern, especially in the oil and gas industry, where employee health and safety are of paramount importance. The correct wearing of work clothes and ...helmets is vital to employee safety, but there are still employees who do not comply. To solve this problem, many companies have adopted manual supervision and strengthened safety education, but the results are not ideal. Therefore, researchers developed an automatic helmet detection system. The development of target detection algorithms has gone through the era of manual feature construction and deep learning, in which single-stage target detection algorithms perform well in terms of speed and performance. However, existing methods are difficult to balance between detection efficiency and accuracy. This research aims to develop an all-weather real-time safety helmet and work clothes monitoring system, using automatic data collection methods to complete the collection of on-site data, saving a lot of manual screening time. The produced data set contains scenes in various time periods, and then the YOLOv7 network is used to train the data set, and Tensorrt is used to optimize the model. Experimental results show that the YOLOv7-based safety helmet and work clothes detection method MAP@O.5:0.95 has an accuracy of 80.42% and a YOLOv7 + Tensorrt detection speed of 90.39 FPS. YOLOv3 and YOLOv5 were used as comparative experiments to prove that our proposed helmet and work clothes detection method can meet the requirements of real-time detection environment while also having high detection accuracy.
31 uses for a white coat Magos, Adam; Al-Shabibi, Nawar; Papadimitriou, Angeliki ...
BMJ,
02/2008, Volume:
336, Issue:
7640
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Here are 31: 1 Use it as a projector screen 2 Donate it to developing countries 3 Give it to any developed country apart from the UK 4 Give it to the butcher 5 Give it to the dentist 6 Cut it up into ...handkerchiefs 7 Turn it into nappies 8 Make sails out of it 9 Make it into dusters or dishcloths 10 Give it to a pharmacist 11 Turn it into napkins 12 Use it for a shadow theatre screen 13 Give it to your child for a school play 14 Donate it to a science museum 15 Give it to the Catholic Church for priest collars 16 Give it to the Catholic Church for nuns' head covers 17 Turn it into hair ribbons 18 Turn it into curtains 19 Turn it into a demonstration banner 20 Wave it as a white flag in case of surrender 21 Use as a dust sheet when you are painting the house 22 Give it to your child to play doctors and nurses 23 Cut it into bandages 24 Donate it to the local abattoir 25 Use for white balance for endoscopy camera 26 Make it into a scarecrow 27 Make it into a windshield for the summer holidays 28 Wear it at a fancy dress party 29 Give it to the local school dinner lady 30 Donate it to the local laboratory 31 Give it to your vet.
How did work wear become a category in hardware stores? Twenty years ago, work clothing was sold in chain department and discount stores including Sears, Eaton's, Towers, Bargain Harold's, Bi-Way and ...many others. In small towns the local men's wear stores all carried work clothing. Today, the only remaining remnant is the assortment in the Sears catalogue. How this came to be and why the work clothing business migrated into hardware stores is a combination of two things. Firstly, there was the phenomenon of casual Friday, which was transformed within a few years into casual everyday. This was the death of the men's suit business which was the backbone of the men's wear industry, and upon which all else depended -- dress shirts, ties, topcoats and so on. The old, tired or inflexible retailers closed. As a salesman calling on small town retailers in Ontario, it looks to me as if about two thirds of all small town men's wear stores are no longer in business. The rest have gone into the high-end designer business, adapting to Polo, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger and others. These stores dropped work clothing not just because it was inconsistent with the high fashion brands, but also because the margin was not there to support the store upgrading that became necessary to properly show these higher priced fashions. The second phenomenon at that time was the arrival of Mark's Work Wearhouse. The timing of the old Bay guy to focus on work clothing was perfect. And Mark's is the name people still think of when talking of work clothing. Then a second work clothing chain, Work World, also started in western Canada but within a short time also had stores across Canada. Work World was a franchise operation with some successful operators, but also had many that were not. It was Mark's major direct competitor.
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