FSSC 22000, 4.10.1 - Work Wear/Sleeveless shirts
Good Morning-
We manufacture glass bottles for the liqueur industry and some food jars. We have yet to be certified for FSSC 22000 but have our fist stage of the audit at the end of the month. Our facility is not air conditioned and it gets to be over 100 degrees sometimes inside the packing house. They stopped allowing sleeveless shirts a few years back before I got here, just because they were getting prepared for food safety but no risk assessment was complete. Historically before then, no contamination issues came from them wearing sleeveless shirts and no customer complaints that I could find. Could sleeveless shirts be okay if I have a risk assessment? I came from distribution (a food storage warehouse before it went to grocery store) and we allowed sleeveless shirts and were SQF certified, I am new to manufacturing of packing so I just need a little help.
This is all it says in the standards:
4.10.1Workwear and protective clothing
The organization shall ensure that personnel who work in or enter into production or storage areas shall wear work clothing which is fit for purpose, in good condition and which not present any potential for contamination. Work clothing shall be suitably segregated from personal clothing. Where appropriate, work clothing or other adequate protection shall provide coverage so that hair, perspiration and loose items cannot contaminate raw materials, intermediate products, food packaging or equipment based on a food safety hazard analysis. Where gloves are used for food packaging contact, they shall be fit for purpose and in good condition. Personal protective equipment, where required, shall be designed to prevent contamination and shall be maintained in hygienic condition.
If you eliminated the root issue you could have them in shirts with sleaves and not worry about sweat spraying off their arms and into the bottles and jars.
Glenn - In an ideal world that would be great but we are working with huge furnaces that put out over 2000 degrees of heat to melt and mold the glass, being an old factory and with budget constraints we will never have a cooler environment except in winter then its freezing. I was just trying to get the workers some relief, although it small. We already allow electrolyte drinks and a risk analysis has been done for that.
Lauralsaiah, I am curious how your audit turned out. Would you mind a brief update? We work in a non-air conditioned factory as well and we went to sleeved shirts when we started the food grade process. We also removed the water bottles from production floor. We manufacture composite fiber cans and would love to give at least the use of water at their stations back to the employees.
Thanks
Shanna
I used to work in an old factory like that as well. We had some definite hot days, but we did not allow sleeveless shirts due to potential contamination. However, we were always allowed to have water coolers NEAR our production areas. They were always far enough away from the line to not cause potential issues. No auditor ever had an issue with it.
I also wondered about a good way to work safely in the heat sometime ago. I posed a question about that on here, but unfortunately no good ideas came out of it. The facility was not built in a way to support air conditioners in the main production area without causing condensation issues. Also, the capital investment to try to do that was too much for the facility, so it wasn't going to be put in place.
We were stuck with short-sleeved uniforms and making sure employees had enough breaks to stay hydrated.