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78
Turning from the consumer to the producer, if so the journeyman
baker may be described, the influence of the conditions under which
bread is made, is different.
It is impossible not to be struck with the white " pasty " faces of
journeymen bakers.
Whatever significance attaches to the pallor of bakers, the fact of
its prevalence is unquestionable.
Whether it is due to a true anæmia or is merely a pigment modification
I am unable to say. There can, however, be no question that
the conditions under which bakers carry on their employment are
responsible for bakers' pallor.
For the most part bakers work during the night and sleep during
the day.
Well lighted and ventilated bakehouses in many instances are
wholly unoccupied while in this satisfactory sanitary condition.
The work of the baker is performed when natural lighting is in
abeyance, when ventilation under existing conditions is incompatible
with the maintainance of a temperature necessary to the trade process,
in an atmosphere which is maintained at tropical heat and which is
charged with the vapours given off from the oven and from human
bodies working in a semi-nude condition at a temperature which stimulates
exhalation.
Added to this, is the fact that the bakehouse is a dusty workroom
and even though the dust be comparatively innocuous, the total of the
conditions can hardly be described as those of a healthy trade.
In the small retail bakehouse it does not seem possible that the
vicissitudes of temperature and the periodic intensification of atmospheric
impurities should be wholly avoided.