Hair nets in sugar factory packaging house
Greetings,
the workers in our packaging house are complaining in summer days, it is very very unconfortable to wear a heir net. Unfortunatelly our packaging area have no air conditioning and some times it is realy hot there. All the hair nets i was searching for were made of polypropylene, which is not very areated material. My question is, if it is actually necessaryto wear the hair net, if all the packaging ways, machines and products are covered and protected. I mean the first human contact with the product is after it is packed and closed, so in my logic i dont see any reason to wear the hair net in the packaging house. I would like to read your opinion about this problem. Thank you very much :)
Dear Delacroix,
You seem to have a remarkably automatic process.
Is the requirement for hairnets due to IFS standard ?
If no specific constraints such as the above, legislatory, contractual, etc and you can justify that the risk of hair ending up in close proximity to the product is negligible it seems to me that the choice is yours.
I would anticipate that yr employees might well prefer some AC. :smile:
Rgds / Charles.C
Dear Charles.C,
The sugar comes from the silo in closed metal pipes, the only opening is inside the 1 kg packaging machine and this machine is closed with acrylic glass. 50 kg packaging machine is an older one, but the bags have just a small hole on the side to fit exactly onto the machine. Maybe the bigbags are a little risky. But the people have troubles with the heat just in the 1 kg hall.
Best regards Dlcrx
We also package dry sugar in a way that there is very little chance of hair contamination due to process design. However, our packaging dept. employees must wear hair nets and beard nets at all times...just not worth a rejection or loss of a customer for a stray hair!
Dear Delacroix,
what are the numbers of complaints with respect to hairs in the last years? Absolut numbers of foreign bodies and as part of this hairs and ppm of these.
The analysis will give you arguments to do this or this.
Regards
moskito
Dear Delacroix,
what are the numbers of complaints with respect to hairs in the last years? Absolut numbers of foreign bodies and as part of this hairs and ppm of these.
The analysis will give you arguments to do this or this.
Regards
moskito
I like Moskito's approach to this concern because there may be no historical complaints on hair in-product at all. This is a classic case of conducting a hazard analysis "outside the process flow" on the likelihood and severity exposure of potential hazard of hair contaminating your "primary packaging-packed product" versus tertiary packaging activities (which is where your people are likely to be base on your line of description). Base on the low contamination risk, I would stop using hairnets but would consider, depending on the primary packaging material, the risk of product contamination from perspiration instead.
Stray hair as a foreign body is not the only issue I would imagine. I perceive hair nets as an antiseptic barrier to introduction of pathogens in the process. As SugarMama has mentioned packaging areas (or other dependent on risk assessment) may require a more stringent approach. People touch their hair out of habit and this may lead to cross-contamination on indirect work surfaces.
We cannot use the historical and make a "defense". If it never happened, it could happen anyways.
I'm currently working in a sugarmill and on our GMP manual the order is:
- Hair nets are mandatory on the critical areas for all the staff and visitors (centrifuges, sugar dryer, packing, storage and loading.);
- Beard is not recommend, but in the case of the bearded :gleam: , the beard nets are mandatory on the critical areas for all the staff and visitors.