The purpose of personal protective equipment is
to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering controls 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 the source and may
result in employees being exposed to the hazard if the equipment fails.
The use of personal protective
equipment (PPE) is inherent in the theory of universal
precaution, which requires specialized clothing or equipment for the protection
of individuals from hazards. The term is defined by the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration (OSHA), which is responsible for PPE regulation, as
the "equipment that protects employees from serious injury or illness
resulting from contact with chemical, radiological, physical, electrical,
mechanical, or other hazards". While there are common forms of PPEs
such as gloves, eye shields, and respirators, the standard set in the OSHA
definition indicates a wide coverage. This means that PPE involves a sizable
range of equipment. There are several ways to classify them such as how gears
could be physiological or environmental.
Notable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suit
Hazmat
A hazmat suit (hazardous materials suit) is
a piece of personal protective
equipment that consists of an impermeable whole-body
garment worn as protection against hazardous materials. Such suits are often
combined with self-contained
breathing apparatus (SCBA) to ensure a supply
of breathable air. Hazmat suits are used by firefighters, emergency medical
technicians, paramedics, researchers,
personnel responding to toxic spills, specialists cleaning up contaminated
facilities, and workers in toxic environments.
The hazmat suit generally includes breathing air
supplies to provide clean, uncontaminated air for
the wearer. In laboratory use,
clean air may be supplied through attached hoses. This air is usually pumped
into the suit at positive pressure with respect to the surroundings as an
additional protective measure against the introduction of dangerous agents into
a potentially ruptured or leaking suit.
Working in a hazmat suit is very strenuous, as
the suits tend to be less flexible than conventional work garments. With the
exception of laboratory versions, hazmat suits can be hot and poorly ventilated
(if at all). Therefore, use is usually limited to short durations of up to 2
hours, depending on the difficulty of the work. Level A (United States) suits,
for example, are limited by their air supply to around 15–20 minutes of very
strenuous work (such as a firefighting rescue in a building). However,
OSHA/EPA protective level A suits/ensembles are not typically used in
firefighting rescue, especially during a building/structure fire. National Fire
Protection Association (NFPA) compliant "turnout gear", and
NIOSH-certified SCBA, or CBRN SCBA, are the primary protection technologies for
structure firefighting in the US.
Hazmat suits come in two variations: splash
protection and gastight suits. The splash protection suits are designed to
prevent the wearer from coming into contact with a liquid. These suits do not
protect against gases or dust. Gastight suits additionally protect against
gases and dust.
NBC
An NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical)
suit, also called a chemsuit or chem suit or chemical
suit is a type of military personal protective
equipment. NBC suits are designed to provide protection
against direct contact with and contamination by radioactive, biological, or chemical substances, and
provide protection from contamination with radioactive materials and all types
of radiation. They are generally designed to be worn for extended periods to
allow the wearer to fight (or generally function) while under threat of or
under actual nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. The civilian equivalent
is the hazmat suit. The
term NBC has been replaced by CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear),
with the addition of a new threat, radiological, meaning radiological weapon.
NBC stands for nuclear, biological,
and chemical. It is a term
used in the armed forces and in health and safety, mostly in the context
of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) clean-up in overseas conflict or
protection of emergency services during the response to a terrorist attack, though there
are civilian and common-use applications (such as recovery and clean up efforts
after industrial accidents).
In military operations, NBC suits are intended
to be quickly donned over a soldier’s uniform and can continuously protect the
user for up to several days. Most are made of impermeable material such as
rubber, but some incorporate a filter, allowing air, sweat, and condensation to
slowly pass through.
The older Soviet suit was impermeable
rubber-coated canvas. Now known as the CBRN suit, the British Armed Forces suit is reinforced nylon
with charcoal impregnated felt. It is more comfortable because of the
breathability but has a shorter useful life, and must be replaced often. The
British Armed Forces suit is known as a "Noddy suit" because some of
them had a pointed hood like the hat worn by the fictional character Noddy. The Soviet-style suit
will protect the wearer at higher concentrations than the British suit but is
less comfortable due to the build-up of moisture within it. A Soviet suit was
known as a "Womble" because
of its long-faced respirator with round visor glasses.
EOD
A bomb suit, Explosive
Ordnance Disposal (EOD) suit, or a blast suit is a
heavy suit of body armor designed to withstand the pressure generated by
a bomb and any fragments
the bomb may produce. It is usually worn by trained personnel
attempting bomb disposal. In
contrast to ballistic body armors, which usually focus on protecting the torso and head, a
bomb suit must protect all parts of the body, since the dangers posed by a
bomb's explosion affect
the entire body.
Parts of the bomb suit overlap for maximum
protection. The suit protects in several different ways. It deflects or stops
projectiles that may come from an exploded device. It also stops or greatly
decreases the pressure of the blast wave being transmitted to the person inside
of the suit. Most bomb suits, such as the Advanced Bomb Suit, use layers of Kevlar, foam, and plastic to
accomplish these functions.
In order to maximize protection, bomb suits
come with a pair of interchangeable gloves and wrist guard attachments. This
gives the wearer's hands mobility and protection needed for the task and avoids
cross-contamination of any evidence found (e.g., fingerprints).
EOD technicians wear bomb suits during reconnaissance,
'render safe' or disruption procedures on potential or confirmed explosive
threats. Such suits must provide a tremendous degree of protection from fragmentation,
blast overpressure, and thermal and tertiary effects should the threat device
detonate. At the same time, the suit can significantly hinder their mobility
or situational awareness.
To effectively stop a blast wave, thick layers
of Kevlar, foam, and plastic are needed to prevent serious bodily harm. Since
the entire body needs protection, the resulting bomb suit is heavy (80 pounds
(36 kg) or more), hot to the point of risking heat stress, and impairs
movement. The materials needed to make bomb suits protective do not release
body heat generated by the wearer. The result can be heat stress, which
can lead to illness and disorientation, reducing the wearer’s ability to
accomplish the task. The most recent models of bomb suits include
battery-operated cooling systems to prevent heat stress. One manufacturer’s
study claims that the internal cooling systems on 39 lbs and 81 lbs
bomb suits helped the wearer stay at workable temperatures for up to an hour,
even in a hot environment.
It is used in Hazardous and Dangerous control
Safe handling refers to the process in which
health care workers adhere to practices set forth by national health and safety
organizations that have been designed to eliminate or significantly reduce
occupational exposure. Some of these practices include but are not limited to,
donning personal protective equipment such as a disposable gown, gloves,
masks, and the utilization of a closed-system drug transfer device. The key to safe
handling is to protect the health care worker throughout the three phases of
contact with hazardous drugs. These phases are drug preparation,
administration, and disposal.
Hazardous materials are often subject to chemical regulations. Hazmat teams are personnel
specially trained to handle dangerous goods, which include materials that are radioactive, flammable, explosive, corrosive, oxidizing, asphyxiating, biohazardous, toxic, pathogenic,
or allergenic. Also
included are physical conditions such as compressed gases and liquids or hot
materials, including all goods containing such materials or chemicals, or may
have other characteristics that render them hazardous in specific
circumstances.
Dangerous goods are often indicated by
diamond-shaped signage on the item (see NFPA 704), its container, or the
building where it is stored. The color of each diamond indicates its hazard,
e.g., flammable is indicated with red because fire and heat are generally of
red color, and explosive is indicated with orange because mixing red
(flammable) with yellow (oxidizing agent) creates orange. A non-flammable and
nontoxic gas is indicated with green.
Arc flash is distinctly different from
the arc blast, which is the supersonic shockwave produced when the
uncontrolled arc vaporizes the metal conductors. Both are part of the same arc
fault and are often referred to as simply an arc flash, but from a safety
standpoint, they are often treated separately. For example, personal protective
equipment (PPE) can be used to effectively shield a
worker from the radiation of an arc flash, but that same PPE may likely be
ineffective against the flying objects, molten metal, and violent concussion
that the arc blast can produce. (For example, category-4 arc-flash protection,
similar to a bomb suit, is
unlikely to protect a person from the concussion of a very large blast,
although it may prevent the worker from being vaporized by the intense light of
the flash.) For this reason, other safety precautions are usually taken in
addition to wearing PPE, helping to prevent injury.
There are many methods of protecting personnel from arc flash hazards. This can include personnel wearing arc flash personal protective equipment (PPE) or modifying the design and configuration of electrical equipment. The best way to remove the hazards of an arc flash is to de-energize electrical equipment when interacting with it, however, de-energizing electrical equipment is in and of itself an arc flash hazard. In this case, one of the newest solutions is to allow the operator to stand far back from the electrical equipment by operating equipment remotely, this is called remote racking.
