The sanitation shift can be an assault on the senses, full of steamy sprays and overwhelming fog, antiseptic or unpleasant aromas, squelching sounds, and slippery surfaces. If you've ever stepped onto a food production floor at midnight and witnessed the bustle of activity, you know that something important is happening. Employees are racing against sunrise to get equipment dismantled, scrubbed of soil, rinsed, sanitized, and reassembled before operations can begin anew the next day. Add in some repair activity or unforeseen maintenance task, a smorgasbord of potent chemical solutions, sometimes minimal oversight by management, and regular staff turnover, and the potential for accidents to happen on third shift multiplies.
Nationwide, sanitation and maintenance workers represent a small percentage of the food processing workforce, depending on the type of operation (e.g., fresh versus further processing), but represent significantly higher rates of occupational injury than other industries. Based on roughly 1.6 million people employed in food manufacturing,1 the sanitation and maintenance population ranges from 45,000 to 90,000 workers. The incidence rate of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses in food manufacturing hovers at around 5.1 per 100 full-time workers (compared to manufacturing as a whole, at 4.0). However, documenting the incidence rate for sanitation work in food processing is complex because workplace injuries are not reported by job classification.