There are many amongst us who just love to have baked goods, and we should really thank bakers for that. Besides investing their skills and effort, they also take extreme care for ensuring preparation of items like artisan breads, cakes, pies, etc to highest standards. And sometimes, they even go to the extent of risking themselves to contracting various respiratory diseases like bronchitis and asthma.
There are several factors which can trigger asthma in bakery workers, including flour dust. However, these factors can be easily nullified using some effective technology safeguards. If you own a bakery and wish to protect yourself as well as your employees from respiratory illnesses, have a look at the points mentioned below:
Preparation Of Dough In Agitator & Mixer
The highest concentrations of dust occur at the time of pouring out flour into mixers. The resulting dust gets scattered throughout the air and increases chances of developing asthma. In order to prevent that from happening, many professionals dealing with bakery mixing systems suggest installation of source extractors in dough mixers.
Metering Flour By Hand
Flour is generally metered manually for establishing the required consistency and this leads to distribution of flour dust in the bakery environment, which can cause asthma as well. Using a source extractor can put an end to this problem as well.
Powdering Bins & Bread With Flour
Before working on top of tables or filling baskets & bins with dough, the surfaces are powdered using flour. Since this activity is performed in high frequency over large areas, the dust gets evenly scattered in the atmosphere and inhaled later on by the workers. The only solution to prevent spread of dust at the time of powdering is making use of powerful air cleaner with high filtration.
Metering Flour Over Silo
When flour is metered over a silo, dust in high concentrations mixes with the air because of the short filler hoses used. This issue can be simply resolved by using a long filler hose. Alternatively, you can even get a source extraction system.
Sweeping Using Brooms
Sweeping with the help of brooms inside a commercial or industrial bakery is quite an outdated practice. It whirls up the fine flour particles and then redistributes them, thus contaminating the entire premise. If your bakery still follows this practice, then you need to dump this obsolete cleaning technique immediately and get a central vacuum system instead.
Following the solutions given for the above mentioned problems can significantly help you to keep your bakery free from respiratory illnesses.
