Toronto Researcher Hopes to Develop “Snow Tires for Feet”
A Toronto researcher is looking at ways to reduce the number of falls on ice, by trying to develop what she refers to as “winter tires for feet.”
Jennifer Hsu, (her name is pronounced “shoe” — no lie), a PhD candidate in biomedical and mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto, has spent a large portion of her summer inside of a cold lab at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, trying to find out more about why and how people fall during the winter months, in the hope that she might design shoes that could ultimately help to prevent falls.
Hsu has been concentrating on falls by postal workers in the past, because they work outside in all conditions and often lose work time because of injuries suffered through falls on ice. More specifically, she’s looking at the cleats Canada Post provides for mail carriers.
Coat wearing volunteers in the climate-controlled lab, which is typically set to temperatures as low as –20°C, traipse over walkways designed to imitate surfaces such as steep ramps and stairs, while sensors record their movements. Each volunteer is equipped with a safety harness to prevent them from being injured.
In addition to researching the materials and design of the shoes, Hsu is also examining how people walk while wearing different types of footwear.
Past research has shown that most falls occur at a temperature of about 0°C outside, when a thin layer of water ices over, or after a thick layer of snow falls on top of ice . It is estimated the injuries due to falls cost the Canadian health care system about $2.8 billion a year.
Hsu’s research is being conducted with the help of an Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board grant.
Tags: injury, Safety, Worker Safety, workplace safety
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