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Karen Hall

Publications and source records attributed to Karen Hall.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Importance of airborne contamination during dressing of beef and lamb carcasses.

Carcasses along slaughter lines were exposed to normal slaughterhouse air or ultraclean air provided from a unit fitted with a HEPA filter. In cattle slaughterhouses, aerobic viable counts were measured by sponging the brisket at the end of the line to determine whether the slaughterhouse air had led to contamination of the carcasses. Furthermore, a replica cattle carcass with settle plates attached was exposed to similar conditions. The greatest contamination of the plates occurred at the hide puller (P < 0.01). The use of ultraclean air reduced the deposition of organisms onto settle plates (P < 0.01). The airborne route contributed to contamination in cattle slaughterhouses, but other vectors were more important. Further study of contamination of the brisket, at the time that it was first exposed, showed that knives transfer contamination from the hide. The use of ultraclean air at this position showed that the airborne route was a contributor to contamination (P < 0.1), but it was not the greatest vector. In lamb slaughterhouses, the highest counts on settle plates were found at the fleece puller (P < 0.05). The highest counts on the lamb carcasses were found on the brisket exposed from the start of the line to just after the fleece puller (P < 0.05). There was no clear relationship between the measured counts and the concentration of organisms in the air, indicating that the airborne route in lamb slaughterhouses contributes less to carcass contamination than do the surface contacts.

Abattoirs↗
PubMed2005

Power mobility driving training for seniors: a pilot study.

This article describes two power mobility training protocols used with seniors and compares posttraining driving performance. Twelve users of power mobility were consecutively recruited from two residential facilities in Toronto, Canada. The aim of training at both sites was to make clients comfortable with and safe at driving power mobility devices. The content of training was similar, but training protocols differed significantly in terms of the number of sessions (means of 3.43 vs. 9.80; p < or = .05) and the time frame over which the sessions were offered (means of 1.57 vs. 5.10 weeks; p < or = .01). Participants at the two sites differed significantly in terms of overall driving performance (p < or = .05), gender (p < or = .01), and type of device used (p < or = .05). Overall, driving performance was significantly associated with facility, gender, type of device used, and training duration (p < or = .05). When these variables were entered into an exploratory hierarchical regression, facility accounted for 64% of the variance in driving performance. When facility was controlled for, the correlations between device and duration of training with driving performance were no longer significant. The determinants of driving performance are difficult to clearly specify as the variable facility encompasses gender as well as all other differences between the two training protocols. Nevertheless, these data provide direction for future research in this area.

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