Posted By Sean Fraser
Robin,

Without wanting to appear facetious, I would say that you are being overly generous in providing a jacket, hat and gloves for personnel who are having such a low exposure to this perceived hazard. Did you mean that they enter this cold environment for such short periods but on a frequent basis per day, so there is the cumulative effect, or what it actually read as, which was no more than 5 minutes per day.

Example - we operate a small yard and in recent times I have been out in my shirtsleeves when the ambient temperature was below 0 degC. I was only out for a couple of minutes, fully aware of my decision not to wear a jacket and immediately returned to a warm building. If I had needed to be out longer, I would probably have worn my own winter jacket to keep reasonably warm. But if I was routinely working in that environment, I would expect to have reasonable warm clothing supplied (as you suggested) and to return to a warmer environment immediately my activities finished. But ONLY if I was being expected to enter that environment frequently and for relatively prolonged periods. Under the principles of risk assessment you should be seeking to change the working practice to eliminate or at least reduce the exposure to the hazard before you consider additional PPE in any case - bear in mind that PPE always fails to danger and it cannot be considered an effective means of reducing risk.

Horses for courses. Another way to look at it is the difference between user and an operator under DSE - the level of risk is proportional to the exposure to the activity.

Posted By Robin Welch
Sean

Thanks for your reply, it is as written 5 mins per day (not frequently during the course of a day).

There would be little or no cumulative effect with such short exposure.

Thanks