Safety and health risks for workers exposed to cold thermal environments: A frozen food processing industry perspective.

Background: Environmental temperatures in the fresh food industry vary from 0°C to 10°C, and go below -20°C for the frozen food industry, representing risk for the health and safety of workers involved.

Objective: The aim of this work was to evaluate the cold thermal stress risks for workers working in a frozen food industry.

Methods: A total of 27 acclimatized workers (13 male and 14 female) participated in a study which was conducted during 11 working days. The thermal sensation questionnaire and the cold work health questionnaire (CWHQ) were applied to all participants. Additionally, 4 workers were chosen to be fully monitored with a thermometer telemetry capsule for measuring the intra-abdominal temperature and 8 skin temperature sensors.

Results: The lowest recorded hand temperature was 14.09°C, lowest forehead 18.55°C, mean skin temperature had variations of 1.10 to 3.20°C along the working period. Highest and most frequent fluctuations were found in the hand and forehead skin temperatures, small changes were found in mean skin temperature.

Conclusions: Answers to the CWHQ increase concern on clinical forms of "a frigore", and in two cases the mean body temperature decreased below 35.0°C, which is defined in the current literature as a mild form of hypothermia.