De-icing Planes

On my trips through various airports around Europe in the last few months, I have had the pleasure of watching the de-icing of planes, which I found extremely interesting. I can see your eyes glazing over already...
Firstly, there were a couple of different processes - sometimes the planes were de-iced at their stands and sometimes they were de-iced just in front of the runway. I couldn't see that it would make that much difference to the danger of ice reforming in such a short time (the ambient temperature was actually higher in the 'runway' airport as opposed to the 'stand' airports).
Secondly, there were several different de-icing truck types. 1) The one used by Lufthansa at Frankfurt airport was a super-duper high-tech one with an enclosed cabin and remote controls to shoot the antifreeze liquid onto the wings. A guy in the truck drove it around while the guy in the cabin controlled the de-icing. When it was done, the guy got out of the cabin, walked down some steps built into the crane shaft and when he was on the ground, the cabin folded down neatly into the body of the truck. 2) The ones used at Schiphol were 1-man trucks with a crane and cameras, lights and de-icing hoses at the top. 3) The most common one was used by British Airways at Frankfurt, among others, and was a 2-man truck with a cherry-picker open basket-type arrangement. The guy stood in the cherry picker with a gun/hose in his hand and lent out of the basket to do the de-icing. I am convinced that this 3rd truck is not great from an OHS point of view. None of the men had breathing apparatus or even simple masks on while leaning out of an open basket several metres above the ground in a windy & cold airport apron, kicking up an enormous spray of hot, fluorescent green, anti-freeze liquid. Not a job I'll be applying for in the near future.
While I'm on the subject of snow, ice and cold, the UK is the worst of all the European countries I've been to in dealing with snow and ice on public streets. When the snow came down, the streets and pavements became treacherous. People slipped and slid across the ice. After a similar size dump of snow in Frankfurt overnight, I emerged at 8am from my hotel to find a clean little path, devoid of any snow, ice, mud or dirt, all the way to the office. I was most impressed. I expressed my surprise at this efficiency to my client, who said, 'Of course it is clean and clear! Why wouldn't it be?!' : ) The Dutch are slower to clear the snow but likewise end up with pristine pathways and the Slovaks have a bit of slush, though they do have 4-5 foot high banks of snow against the walls & fences.
I am sooo over the cold, snow, wind and darkness. Seasonal effect is most definitely real.