Oceanography | Vol.33, No.3
COMMENTARY
Equity and Safety in Polar Oceanography?
Let’s Start with Equal Chances of Survival. Literally.
By Anna Glüder
As seagoing Earth scientists, we are used
to taking safety procedures, safety train-
ing, and safety equipment very seriously.
Understandably so: working on ships in
remote regions means that accidents have
the potential to be life-threatening. As a
result, the precautions taken to minimize
the risks of hazards are intended to be
detailed and comprehensive.
Here, I highlight an opportunity for
leadership to extend this strong advocacy
for safety during field operations to an
area that has historically been neglected:
consideration of body sizes other than the
“standard male” when equipping research
ships with survival equipment.
Immersion suits, flight suits, life jack-
ets, and foul weather gear are commonly
stocked as one-size-fits-all. For me, a
160 cm (5 ft, 3 in) tall woman, practice
putting on an immersion suit aboard a
ship usually triggers well- intentioned
jokes about how it could fit several peo-
ple my size rather than questioning
whether in case of a true emergency I
would be adequately protected. In the
words of a mate of a major research ship
who recently provided training on how
to don the immersion suits: “We have
the standard suits, and then some larger
ones and a few extra-large ones. If you are
small, sorry, they are probably not going
to work that well.”
They are not going to work that well. In
Arctic waters, your survival chance with-
out any protection is less than 15 min-
utes. Immersion suits are rated to prolong
that time span to up to six hours, given
a water-tight seal around wrists and neck
and an ideal trim (good fit) after most of
the air is purged from the suit.
The University-National Oceanographic
Laboratory System (UNOLS) safety stan-
dards state that “immersion suits are
required for vessels operating north of
32 degrees north and south of 32 degrees
south and should be type approved under
series 46 CFR 160.171” (UNOLS, 2015,
p. 17-2). The US Code of Federal Regu-
lations (CFR), 46 CFR 160.171-17 speci-
fies that in order to be approved, general
testing has to be conducted on three
females and seven males of three physical
body types. Required tests include don-
ning time, field of vision, walking, climb-
ing, righting, and water and air penetra-
tion. Testing related to thermal protection
is listed separately and specifically calls for
male test subjects to be used. Why has this
testing not been updated to account for
women’s body types?
The International Convention for the
Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) adopts reg-
ulations following resolution Msc.81(7),
which are slightly different and require
at least one of six test persons to be a
woman (IMO, 1998). However, in order
to test thermal protections, manikins can
be used that represent the 50th percentile
North American male.
For both UNOLS and SOLAS, the
required thermal protection states that
the wearer’s body temperature may not
drop by more than two degrees when
immersed for six hours in water between
0° and 2°C. The studies on which these
and other legal requirements are based
were conducted on—yes—male vol-
unteers or manikins representing the
50th percentile North American male
(Tipton, 1995; Lewandowski and Clark,
2016). These immersion suit tests con-
trast with the initial studies determining
the rate of heat loss in Arctic waters with-
out any protection, which featured both
males and females (Hayward et al., 1975;
Hayward, 1984).
Not only are the requirements for sur-
vival suits vague, current studies appear
to have skipped even considering what
equipment would be safe for anyone other
than the 50th percentile male. Perhaps this
oversight led to blog posts such as this
one, written from D/V JOIDES Resolution
where immersion suits are supplied in
four different sizes, including a small
one: “There are four basic sizes—small,
medium, large and extra-large. Those
of us on the smaller end of small, how-
ever, are doomed to surviving without
seeing— the zipper comes up level with
our foreheads” (https://joidesresolution.
org/survival-suit-101/).
A suit that is too large will fail in mul-
tiple ways. The most critical function
of immersion protective clothing is to
keep the clothing worn beneath them
dry. Tipton (1995) shows that the criti-
cal limit of cold-water intrusion before
a significant reduction of survival time
is 200 ml (i.e., not quite a cup). It’s easy
to see that an ill-fitting seal at neck and
wrists can be deadly.
A second path to failure is the addition
of buoyancy in the attached boot space.
Most immersion suits are outfitted with
an internal life jacket designed to keep
the head above water to prevent drown-
ing. To work properly, as much air as pos-
sible must be expelled from inside the suit
when donning. The more space there is,
the more difficult it is to push out all the
extra air, which in a worst-case scenario,