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Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services

The foundation of healthy workplace design is an understanding of work practices. Volunteers comprise the majority of the workforce in care centers using horses to address human health issues. Documentation is lacking on protections for worker well-being in equestrian microenvironments which are kno...

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Autores principales: Tumlin, Kimberly, Liu, Sa, Park, Jae-Hong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8508050/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34639685
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910385
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author Tumlin, Kimberly
Liu, Sa
Park, Jae-Hong
author_facet Tumlin, Kimberly
Liu, Sa
Park, Jae-Hong
author_sort Tumlin, Kimberly
collection PubMed
description The foundation of healthy workplace design is an understanding of work practices. Volunteers comprise the majority of the workforce in care centers using horses to address human health issues. Documentation is lacking on protections for worker well-being in equestrian microenvironments which are known to have the potential for dust exposures. Climate acts as a master variable in equestrian facility design and ventilation usage to address dust and temperature concerns. Using climate as an independent variable, our objective was to characterize space usage, safety, environmental control, and organizational practices through a national survey of equine assisted programs. We found that more fully enclosed indoor arena spaces were in cold/very cold and mixed-humid climates (p = 0.0114). Annually more volunteers (p = 0.0073) work in these two climate groups averaging 100 volunteers per location. A total of 34% of all facilities, regardless of climate, do not use mechanical ventilation systems (e.g., fans). As volunteer worker time in the arena increased, time in the barn microenvironment tended to decrease (p = 0.0538). We identified facility designs, ventilation usage, and worker arrangements to refine the scalability of future air contaminant monitoring and to provide frameworks for education, workplace design, and prevention of exposure to dust.
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spelling pubmed-85080502021-10-13 Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services Tumlin, Kimberly Liu, Sa Park, Jae-Hong Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The foundation of healthy workplace design is an understanding of work practices. Volunteers comprise the majority of the workforce in care centers using horses to address human health issues. Documentation is lacking on protections for worker well-being in equestrian microenvironments which are known to have the potential for dust exposures. Climate acts as a master variable in equestrian facility design and ventilation usage to address dust and temperature concerns. Using climate as an independent variable, our objective was to characterize space usage, safety, environmental control, and organizational practices through a national survey of equine assisted programs. We found that more fully enclosed indoor arena spaces were in cold/very cold and mixed-humid climates (p = 0.0114). Annually more volunteers (p = 0.0073) work in these two climate groups averaging 100 volunteers per location. A total of 34% of all facilities, regardless of climate, do not use mechanical ventilation systems (e.g., fans). As volunteer worker time in the arena increased, time in the barn microenvironment tended to decrease (p = 0.0538). We identified facility designs, ventilation usage, and worker arrangements to refine the scalability of future air contaminant monitoring and to provide frameworks for education, workplace design, and prevention of exposure to dust. MDPI 2021-10-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8508050/ /pubmed/34639685 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910385 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tumlin, Kimberly
Liu, Sa
Park, Jae-Hong
Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services
title Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services
title_full Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services
title_fullStr Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services
title_full_unstemmed Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services
title_short Framing Future of Work Considerations through Climate and Built Environment Assessment of Volunteer Work Practices in the United States Equine Assisted Services
title_sort framing future of work considerations through climate and built environment assessment of volunteer work practices in the united states equine assisted services
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8508050/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34639685
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph181910385
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