A sneeze guard is a
barrier that is commonly found on
food service equipment. Think of the
plastic window that you look through on a common salad bar. Thats a
sneeze guard.
The
purpose of a sneeze guard is to
interrupt the direct line between the
consumer and the
food. This protection is used to protect the food from (
say it with me now) the
contaminants found in and on the
human body. Basically, if you sneeze in the line for your
leafy greens, the
projectile components of your sneeze, namely
water droplets,
mucus,
suspended air pollution and all sorts of
microscopic biological organisms, stay out of the
food. A
sneeze can go as fast as
85% of the speed of sound or approximately
630 miles per hour, creating a
droplet cloud roughly 3 feet wide.
Health regulations in most areas require that some type of barrier exist to protect food from
"bodily ejections". These regulations often go as far as to detail the
placement of the sneeze guard appropriate to the serving situation. For example, if
elementary students will be served, sneeze guard placement would be
relative to their
height.