초록
The gaiter is one of the personal protective equipments worn in various industrial sites. This study was performed on humans to investigate the physiological strain of wearing gaiters and to compare control gaiters that are currently on the market and new gaiters that are developed for alleviating heat stress. Experiments were conducted in a climatic chamber of WBGT $30.0\pm0.7^{\circ}C$ under five differed experimental conditions: None, Control A, Control B, New A, New B. The results were as follows. The temperature inside gaiters was significantly lower in both New A and New B than in both Control A and Control B and the difference between news and controls was 1$^{\circ}C$ (p<.01). The humidity inside gaiters in both New A and New B were higher than that in Control A, and lower than that in Control B (p<.01). The outermost surface temperature of the gaiter was the lowest in None and it increased in the following order: New B < New A < Control A < Control B. Mean skin temperature was higher by 0.14$^{\circ}C$ in wearing gaiters than in no gaiters. Skin temperatures in lower body were lower in Control than in New and skin temperature in upper body were higher in Control than in New (p<.01). Local sweat rate, total weight loss and subjective sensations did not show a significant difference according to the gaiters. It was concluded that wearing gaiters affected distribution of skin temperature and local sweat rate.