Evaluating the effectiveness and practicality of a cooling vest across four industries in Hong Kong
Abstract
Purpose
Extreme hot environments are prevalent in many occupational settings, and facilities management workers are no exception. Wearing suitable cooling garment is a useful means to alleviate heat strain and improving performance at heat exposure. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness and applicability of the cooling vest across four selected fields (i.e. construction, outdoor cleaning and horticulture, kitchen work and work involved manual handling at the airport) and identify the shortcomings of the cooling vest used by the participating workers.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted a two-phase design: a quantitative questionnaire survey followed by qualitative in-depth interviews.
Findings
A remarkable physical strain alleviation (PSA) of 21.1 per cent (14.8 per cent in construction, 18.8 per cent in horticulture and cleaning, 27.4 per cent in kitchen and catering and 26.5 per cent in airport apron service) is achieved by the use of cooling vest in four industries. Despite the success of PSA, several shortcomings of the cooling vest were identified: easily stained color, heavy weight, short cooling time, inflexibility that presents a hazard around moving equipment, lack of industry-specific design, nondurable and thick fabric with poor permeability.
Originality/value
The findings of the current study do not only confirm the effectiveness of the cooling vest in alleviating heat strain and physical strain but also identify the major shortcomings upon which further improvements can be made.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This project is jointly funded by a grant from the Occupational Safety and Health Council (OSHC Research Grant No. CM/4R/2011-01) and Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (RGC Project No. PolyU510513). The research team is indebted to the technical support from technicians of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In particular, the participation of volunteers in this study is gratefully acknowledged. This paper forms part of the research project titled “The effectiveness of personal cooling equipment for protecting workers from heat stroke while working in a hot environment”, from which other deliverables will be produced with different objectives/scopes but sharing common background and methodology. The authors also wish to acknowledge the contributions of other team members including Dr YP Guo, and Miss Jackie Yang.
Citation
Chan, A.P.C., Yi, W. and Wong, F.K.W. (2016), "Evaluating the effectiveness and practicality of a cooling vest across four industries in Hong Kong", Facilities, Vol. 34 No. 9/10, pp. 511-534. https://doi.org/10.1108/F-12-2014-0104
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited