rags on racks with adequate ventilation for air-drying.
All trash cans in living and berthing spaces should be provided with tight-fitting covers and be cleaned inside and out when they become soiled. The use of plastic liners is recommended.
Air all bedding, including mattresses, outdoors at frequent intervals.
Use all mattresses with covers, otherwise they become permeated with body grease, dirt, and discharges.
Mattresses properly protected with impervious covers that have been used by personnel with highly infectious diseases must be disinfected by wiping with approved disinfecting solutions; unprotected mattresses may be autoclave with facilities that are available and the particular construction materials (e.g., cotton ticking) can withstand heat and pressure. If no facilities for autoclaving unprotected mattresses are available or the materials cannot be autoclave, survey the mattresses and destroy them by burning.
Clean, renovate, or replace mattresses that are dirty or in a poor state of repair as soon as possible.
The major objectives of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning are to maintain physical fitness, mental alertness, fighting ability, and the general well-being of personnel ashore and afloat. This should include consideration for the stresses of frequent watches, prolonged cruising, and battle or general quarters situations. The design and maintenance of environmental control systems should ensure useful productivity and recovery from undue physical stress rather than thermal comfort alone.
In addition, environmental control systems must ensure that the air in confined spaces contains no harmful components and has sufficient quantities of oxygen.
Special use areas, such as selected Medical Department spaces and those containing equipment and material that require individually controlled surroundings, must be designed to guarantee optimum mission performance under variable environmental conditions.
The problems encountered in maintaining optimum habitability aboard naval vessels can be realized if we consider the many factors involved. The heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems must be designed for a wide range of climatic conditions ranging from arctic to tropical. The structural integrity of the ship must be preserved and penetration of watertight structures kept to a minimum. In spite of this, fresh air and heat must be provided to various compartments often far removed from the source of supply.
These problems are further complicated by the lack of uniformity of ventilation or heat demands in the various parts of the ship. Spaces exposed on one or more sides to the prevailing weather may have a high rate of heat gain or loss. Inside spaces may be subject to the effects of wild heat, that is, uncontrolled or waste heat generated by machinery, boilers, galley stoves and ovens, and the like. Thus adjacent compartments may vary to such an extent that one requires heating while the other needs cooling.
The thermal (heat or cold) stress of any working situation is the combination of all factors that result in a gain or loss of body heat or that prevent the bodys regulatory mechanism from working properly. Environmental physiologists use the term stress to designate the force or load acting upon the biological system and the term strain to designate the resulting distortion of the biological system.
Thermal stress factors are heat, cold, humidity, radiation, air movement, and surface temperature. Thermal strain manifests itself in specific cardiovascular, thermoregulatory, respiratory, renal, endocrine, and other responses that differ from accepted norms. Thermal stress has been categorized as acceptable when a person is able to compensate without undue strain or unacceptable when a person is unable to compensate and incurs excessive strain. Thermal strains have been categorized as those interfering with work performance and safety and those with more overt manifestations such as heat rash, heat cramps, heat stroke, heat exhaustion, or freezing injuries.
DRY-BULB TEMPERATURE (DBT) That temperature measured with an alcohol-in-glass thermometer whose bulb is kept dry and shielded from radiation.