Short-term fingertip contact with cold materials

Typically, industry workers are exposed to, and may touch, either accidentally or intentionally, many surfaces of different materials (e g machine parts, walls etc.) For environments containing hot surfaces, standards are available to determine the temperature limits for these surfaces in order to minimise safety risks (skin bums, EN 563 1994). However, no such standard is available for cold surfaces and for those working in such a cold environment, accidental skin contact exposure and the resultant skin cooling could pose a health and safety risk in terms of discomfort, pain, numbness and skin damage Data was collected for the derivation of a cold surfaces safety standard (European Union project SMT4-CT97-2149), providing a relation between material type, surface temperature and risk of pain and frostbite for the index fingertip of the non-dominant hand, the overall aim being to use the data to develop a predictive model of fingertip contact cooling allowing the prediction for various materials, temperatures and body thermal states within and outside the actual tested ranges. [Continues.]