Assessment of the effectiveness of modular clothing protecting against the cold based on physiological tests

Abstract

At many workstations in a cold environment, protective clothing provided for the workers is characterized by inadequate thermal insulation, which results in an adverse impact of the cold environment on the worker's body. The purpose of this article is to present developed new ergonomic modular cold protective clothing, which allows for easy adaptation of the thermal insulation of clothing to a worker's individual needs. This clothing was compared in a laboratory study with the clothing having so far been used by workers in a cold environment using physiological and physical measurements, subjective ratings of the thermal state as well as a questionnaire for subjective assessment of the used clothing. These measurements and ratings confirmed that the modular cold protective clothing is more effective in the process of ensuring thermal comfort to the wearer during work in a cold environment than the clothing having so far been used.