by
Donald Hamm, Senior vice-President, Sales and Marketing, Zirconia Inc, USA
Safety and design have long been partnered together in the construction industry, and this pairing is the basis for many building codes that have been developed globally.
We have safety codes related to fire, physical safety of occupants and many more, but there has been little attention to biosafety in the design industry, with only a few exceptions up to now.
Most of these exceptions have been based around food chain production and health care, and are not the conversations many focus on, unless they are your specialisation.
Clearly, global awareness of this has become an issue and major changes are happening with the Covid-19 pandemic and the effect it has had across all industries.
What I am going to look at in this article is a shift in how we look at our projects and operations in terms of safety. When we talk about safety in the workplace, we need to make sure we include safety of the product, the customer, assets, employees and the environment. It is important that we not just assume the technology we have known and used in the past is the answer going forward. We need to look for new technology and new answers as our “new normal” has shown what we have been doing is not enough.
Understanding contamination
First, we need to understand what we are talking about when we discuss biosecurity in regard to micro-organisms like bacteria, viruses and fungi.
For contamination to occur several things must be in place. The first is a transport method to move the organisms to a new surface and after air movement, that is usually us. Once a living organism is on a surface it needs several things to survive: food, water and habitat.
Anything that provides these three things is a host. Most porous surfaces can be hosts, and once organisms are on the surface, they can multiply, mutate, and more importantly transfer to other surfaces or people and repeat the cycle. Nonporous surfaces, though they often are not hosts, can still be transfer surfaces.
Sars-Covid 19 has been shown to survive on most surfaces for days; in some conditions as long as 64 days in colder environments1. These types of passive touch surfaces are common in the food manufacturing industry.
Unfortunately, they are known to extend the life of microorganisms, by capturing and holding them passively.
Read more HERE.
Safety and design have long been partnered together in the construction industry, and this pairing is the basis for many building codes that have been developed globally.
We have safety codes related to fire, physical safety of occupants and many more, but there has been little attention to biosafety in the design industry, with only a few exceptions up to now.
Most of these exceptions have been based around food chain production and health care, and are not the conversations many focus on, unless they are your specialisation.
Clearly, global awareness of this has become an issue and major changes are happening with the Covid-19 pandemic and the effect it has had across all industries.
What I am going to look at in this article is a shift in how we look at our projects and operations in terms of safety. When we talk about safety in the workplace, we need to make sure we include safety of the product, the customer, assets, employees and the environment. It is important that we not just assume the technology we have known and used in the past is the answer going forward. We need to look for new technology and new answers as our “new normal” has shown what we have been doing is not enough.
Understanding contamination
First, we need to understand what we are talking about when we discuss biosecurity in regard to micro-organisms like bacteria, viruses and fungi.
For contamination to occur several things must be in place. The first is a transport method to move the organisms to a new surface and after air movement, that is usually us. Once a living organism is on a surface it needs several things to survive: food, water and habitat.
Anything that provides these three things is a host. Most porous surfaces can be hosts, and once organisms are on the surface, they can multiply, mutate, and more importantly transfer to other surfaces or people and repeat the cycle. Nonporous surfaces, though they often are not hosts, can still be transfer surfaces.
Sars-Covid 19 has been shown to survive on most surfaces for days; in some conditions as long as 64 days in colder environments1. These types of passive touch surfaces are common in the food manufacturing industry.
Unfortunately, they are known to extend the life of microorganisms, by capturing and holding them passively.
Read more HERE.
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
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