Personal protective equipment

Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment designed to protect the wearer's body from injury. The hazards addressed by protective equipment include physical, electrical, heat, chemicals, biohazards, and airborne particulate matter. Protective equipment may be worn for job-related occupational safety and health purposes, as well as for sports and other recreational activities. "Protective clothing" is applied to traditional categories of clothing, and "protective gear" applies to items such as pads, guards, shields, or masks, and others.

The purpose of personal protective equipment is to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering and administrative controls are not feasible or effective to reduce these risks to acceptable levels. PPE is needed when there are hazards present. PPE has the serious limitation that it does not eliminate the hazard at source and may result in employees being exposed to the hazard if the equipment fails.

Practices of occupational safety and health can use hazard controls and interventions to mitigate workplace hazards, which pose a threat to the safety and quality of life of workers. The hierarchy of hazard control hierarchy of control provides a policy framework which ranks the types of hazard controls in terms of absolute risk reduction. At the top of the hierarchy are elimination and substitution, which remove the hazard entirely or replace the hazard with a safer alternative. If elimination or substitution measures cannot apply, engineering controls and administrative controls, which seek to design safer mechanisms and coach safer human behavior, are implemented. Personal protective equipment ranks last on the hierarchy of controls, as the workers are regularly exposed to the hazard, with a barrier of protection. The hierarchy of controls is important in acknowledging that while personal protective equipment has tremendous utility, it is not the desired mechanism of control in terms of worker safety. PPE by type Personal protective equipment can be categorized by the area of the body protected, by the types of hazard, and by the type of garment or accessory. A single item, for example boots, may provide multiple forms of protection: a steel toe cap and steel insoles for protection of the feet from crushing or puncture injuires, impervious rubber and lining for protection from water and chemicals, high reflectivity and heat resistance for protection from radiant heat, and high electrical resistivity for protection from electric shock. The protective attributes of each piece of equipment must be compared with the hazards expected to be found in the workplace.

1. Respirators Respirators serve to protect the user from breathing in contaminants in the air, thus preserving the health of one's respiratory tract. There are two main types of respirators. One type of respirator functions by filtering out chemicals and gases or airborne particles from the air breathed by the user.Gas masks and particulate respirators are examples of this type of respirator. A second type of respirator protects users by providing clean, respirable air from another source. This type includes airline respirators and self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). In work environments, respirators are relied upon when adequate ventilation is not available or other engineering control systems are not feasible or inadequate. 2. Skin protection Occupational skin diseases such as contact dermatitis, skin cancers, and other skin injuries and infections are the second most common type of occupational disease and can be very costly. Skin hazards, which lead to occupational skin disease, can be classified into four groups. Chemical agents can come into contact with the skin through direct contact with contaminated surfaces, deposition of aerosols, immersion or splashes. Physical agents such as extreme temperatures and ultraviolet or solar radiation can be damaging to the skin over prolonged exposure. Mechanical trauma occurs in the form of friction, pressure, abrasions, lacerations and contusions. Biological agents such as parasites, microorganisms, plants and animals can have varied effects when exposed to the skin.

Any form of PPE that acts as a barrier between the skin and the agent of exposure can be considered skin protection. Because a lot of work is done with the hands, gloves are an essential item in providing skin protection. Some examples of gloves commonly used as PPE include rubber gloves, cut-resistant gloves, chainsaw gloves and heat-resistant gloves. For sports and other recreational activities, many different gloves are used for protection, generally against mechanical trauma.

Other than gloves, any other article of clothing or protection worn for a purpose serve to protect the skin. Lab coats for example, are worn to protect against potential splashes of chemicals. Face shields serve to protect one's face from potential impact hazards, chemical splashes or possible infectious fluid.

3. Eye protection Eye injuries can happen through a variety of means. Most eye injuries occur when solid particles such as metal slivers, wood chips, sand or cement chips get into the eye.[6] Smaller particles in smokes and larger particles, such as broken glass also account for particulate matter causing eye injuries. Blunt force trauma can occur to the eye when excessive force comes into contact with the eye. Chemical burns,

biological agents, and thermal agents, from sources such as welding torches and UV light also contribute to occupational eye injury.

While the recommended usage of eye protection varies by occupation, the provision of safety furnished by said piece of equipment can be generalized. Safety glasses provide minimum protection from external debris, and are recommended to provide side protection via a wrap-around design or via side shields. Goggles provide better protection than safety glasses, and are effective in preventing eye injury from chemical splashes, impact, dusty environments and welding. It is recommended that goggles with high air flow be used, in order to prevent fogging. Face shields are a useful form of additional protection to be worn over the standard eyewear, and provide protection from impact, chemical, and blood-borne hazards. Full-face piece respirators are considered the best form of eye protection when respiratory protection is needed as well, but may be less effective against potential impact hazards to the eye. Eye protection used for welding operations is shaded to different degrees, depending on the specific operation. 4. Hearing protection Industrial noise is often overlooked as an occupational hazard, as it is not visible to the eye. Overall, about 22 millions workers in the United States are exposed to potentially damaging noise levels each year. Occupational hearing loss accounted for 14% of all occupational illnesses in 2007, with about 23,000 cases significant enough to cause permanent hearing impairment. About 82% of occupational hearing loss cases occurred to workers in the manufacturing sector. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration establishes occupational noise exposure standards.[9] NIOSH recommends that worker exposures to noise be reduced to a level equivalent to 85 dBA for eight hours to reduce occupational noise induced hearing loss.

PPE for hearing protection consists of earplugs and earmuffs. Workers who are regularly exposed to noise levels above the NIOSH recommendation should be furnished hearing protection by the employers, as they are a low-cost intervention. 5. Protective clothing and ensembles This form of PPE is all-encompassing and refers to the various suits and uniforms worn to protect the user from harm. Lab coats worn by scientists and ballistic vests worn by law enforcement officials, which are worn on a regular basis, would fall into this category. Entire sets of PPE, worn together in a combined suit, would also fall into this category.

Ensembles

Below are some examples of ensembles of personal protective equipment, worn together for a specific occupation or task, to provide maximum protection for the user. 1. Chainsaw protection (especially a helmet with face guard, hearing protection, kevlar chaps, antivibration gloves, and chainsaw safety boots). Specific information about chainsaw protection appears in the chainsaw safety clothing article. 2. Bee-keepers wear various levels of protection depending on the temperament of their bees and the reaction of the bees to nectar availability. At minimum most bee keepers wear a brimmed hat and a veil made of hardware cloth similar to window-screen material. The next level of protection involves leather gloves with long gauntlets and some way of keeping bees from crawling up one's trouser legs. In extreme cases, specially-fabricated shirts and trousers can serve as barriers to the bees' stingers. 3. Diving equipment, for underwater diving, constitute of equipment such as a diving mask, a underwater breathing apparatus, a diving suit or wetsuit, and flippers. 4. Firefighters wear PPE designed to provide protection against fires and various fumes and gases. PPE worn by firefighters include bunker gear, self-contained breathing apparatus, a helmet, safety boots, and a PASS device.