The purpose of this study is to assess the preferred temperature
(Tpref) of human participants exposed to air-conditioned temperature variations in
climate chamber experiments. Findings were later compared with an earlier Tpref
experiment by de Dear et. al. (1991). Twenty nine healthy college-age participants
underwent thirty minutes of preconditioned session before casting their thermal
preference and thermal sensation votes every 10 minutes for the remaining 150
minutes of the experiment. These affective votes were correlated against average of
ambient air temperature and participant's body temperature taken 30 minutes
before the experiment ends. The mean Tpref was 25.1°C (± 1.2), mean skin
temperature of 33.7°C (± 0.6) and mean body temperature of 36.3°C (±0.3). It can
be concluded that Tpref gathered in the preferred temperature experiment shows
significant difference in participants’ temperature preference which was 0.6 °C
cooler than earlier experiment suggesting change in how indoor ambient
temperature is preferred. In addition, mean skin temperature and gender did not
influence participants’ Tpref.
This is a conceptual paper to study the factors that affect the
safety practitioner’s perception towards safety and health risk assessment,
namely HIRARC at oil palm plantation. Retrospective safety and health data
were obtained and analysed. Factors identified were both confusions on
hazard description and interpretation of risk assessment matrix. This paper
will examine those factors and make recommendations for future research in
Malaysia.