Normal vs Boom Operator Heart  (on right)
Normal vs Boom Operator Heart (on right)
DCA iPen's App and its 4 Sensor Bracelets
DCA iPen's App and its 4 Sensor Bracelets
Additional Optional Bracelet for Balls to Manage Temperature Hardship
Additional Optional Bracelet for Balls to Manage Temperature Hardship
Retired Boom Operator Having Exhausted his Temperature Account Capital
Retired Boom Operator Having Exhausted his Temperature Account Capital
When an employee is exposed to painful factors beyond some thresholds, the employer has to write a prevention of exposures sheet. The employee then benefits from a personal prevention of exposures account with which he can accumulate points. Since January 1, 2017, this hardship prevention account is part of the personal activity account (PAA). The accumulated points shall be used for retirement.

Hardship takes into account positions and heavy charge

We all know painfulness associated with physical constraints for boom operators, especially keeping arms raised above shoulders, wich is an unnatural position since human got down from his tree.

This position generates local physical constraints and extreme shoulder posture. It can cause serious pathologies for the back, upper joints and pelvis, in short a real torture for everything that is above the belt, especially when the job is badly practiced. Not to mention the implications for circulatory and cardiac systems. A problem that was hitherto ignored by official authorities, ministries, trade unions and associations.

Minimum duration of this severity is 900 hours per year.

Get your calculator!

Following the vogue for health apps and connected watches or other objects, DC Audiovisuel has developed for smartphone a standalone system for tracking physical hardness, making it possible to precisely know, among other things, duration of raising arms above shoulders. The app produces a full report of vital and mechanical constants of the boom operator on work.

The system consists of a free app (iPen's to download on Google Play, Apple Store or Windows Store) and three ultra miniaturized bracelets: a red and a green one for the left and right wrists (like the Nagra IV-S), and a black one, to be strapped on the boom pole segment between the two hands.

Various sensors are integrated, as well as a nano battery with semi-solid radionuclides. These give precise mesures of arm positions, angulations, balance offsets, hand holding and pressure on the pole, overhang, lever arm of the mic at the end of the boom, induced neck twisting, back tipping (which can be so harmful).

Before the first use, the boom operator must inform some physiological parameters: sex, age, height, starting average weight (to be updated if necessary), shoulder width, waist and chest length, arm length without hands, hands length and width, height of torso, size of feet.

The application is being approved. Data are stored on the Cloud, in France, by our hosting company OVH, distributed securely in the three datacenters of Roubaix, Gravelines and Strasbourg. According to the law, only the DST and the DGSI can access it without judicial requisition.

Finally, this application does not merely assure the boom operator a possible but well-deserved retirement at 60 for hard work. Thanks to a particularly sophisticated algorithm, it provides expert advices on the positions and gestures to be adopted according to the situations for a correct behaviour that respects the body. Prevention is still better than cure.

Hardship also takes into account outside temperature
(In spite of the fair sex, only men are concerned by this chapter)

When it goes below -5 °C, our poor technicians risk testicular torsion. We must not imagine a ball twisted like a bread roll that we want to cut in two, but that of the spermatic cord which is in a way the technical sheath of the balls.

It may happen that the testicle, which has a relative freedom of movement in the scrotum, turns round this cord, which blocks the arrival of blood, slightly like a twisted watering pipe which no longer allows water to pass.

This causes intense pain. Nature is doing well to remind us how valuable is family jewelry. Researchers have hypothesized that the twist was caused by the cremaster muscle who would make the dancers dance too vigorously in case of chilling northern wind.

Unfortunately even the most efficient windscreens of Cinela have no effect on this.

For those who did not choose anatomy as first language, the cremaster is a muscle that, when the outside temperature is too low or you have to go to swimming pool, raises the testicles near the body to keep them warm.

Nothing prevents you from checking this phenomenon by standing naked in front of the open door of your freezer.

This pathology has therefore been taken into account as a hardship criterion since the beginning of this year.

The minimum duration of this severity is 120 hours per year.

The iPen's application from DC Audiovisuel also manages this hardness criterion by addition of an optional bracelet for balls. Its placement and the relating algorithm give necessary mesures and prevents any inappropriate interpretations. For men.
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