An employee needs to be equipped with clothing that protects them from the hazards they&#;re likely to encounter on the job. A business should always follow safety regulations, but these rules should be treated as the minimum requirements and not necessarily the best way to equip a team. A business should identify the hazards employees will be exposed to and the best way to keep their team safe.
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The following safety requirements are based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines regarding personal protective equipment (PPE), including equipment designed specifically for industrial environments:
Injuries to the face can be some of the most serious. Eye injuries in particular are often permanent, as the eyes are a sensitive exposed organ. OSHA&#;s guidelines note a variety of serious eye and face hazards that warrant eye and face protection. These hazards include flying particles, molten metal, liquid chemicals and more.
There are many types of eye and face protection, including safety glasses, goggles, welding shields and face shields. As is true with all PPE, no singular option is best for all situations. It depends on the type of work an employee will be doing and in what environment.
While many people focus on the eyes when considering this type of gear, remember that the mouth and nose are critical areas as well. Protecting these areas is important if an employee could breathe in dangerous particulates or similar hazards.
The head requires vital protection when doing any dangerous activity. In an industrial environment, protecting the head with a hard hat is good practice (and often legally required), even in environments where there aren&#;t many serious hazards.
Protective headwear comes in different forms, and different hard hats are designed for different types of hazards. Bump hats offer minimal protection against bumping into hard surfaces in areas with low head clearance. Class A hard hats are designed to protect against impact, penetration and dangerous voltage. Some headwear, like Class B hard hats, have a greater emphasis on voltage protection, while other types, like Class C hard hats, focus mostly on comfort and impact protection.
Whenever possible, employees need to stay stable and in control of their movements. This means they need to be equipped with proper footwear and legwear. Steel-toed boots are the standard in many industrial environments, as they protect the toes from being crushed. They can also be designed with a &#;grippy&#; bottom that improves traction on slippery surfaces.
The legwear that&#;s appropriate for employees will vary greatly by their work. For example, many types of construction work can be done safely in jeans, but when fire or chemical spills pose a major concern, jeans won&#;t sufficiently protect employees from those hazards.
For some jobs, a secondary piece of protection, like an apron, can reasonably reduce the risks a person might be exposed to. For others, a person may need to wear specialized legwear to protect against hazards.
Oftentimes, an employee in an industrial environment might only need leather work gloves, if they need gloves at all. These can help protect against burns and minor scratches but not much else.
There are more specialized gloves, such as those used by electricians, which are designed to reduce the risk of electric shock. However, gloves can significantly reduce dexterity essential for some tasks.
The necessity of arm protection can vary significantly. In some industrial environments, short sleeves may help keep employees cool and not significantly increase the risk of injury. In others, long sleeves or even specialized PPE may be needed to protect against sparks, chemicals and other kinds of hazards.
Different hazards warrant different levels of care when it comes to torso protection. The bare minimum is often visibility. Hi-vis vests or similar articles of clothing can help an employee stand out in a busy environment to reduce risk of being struck by moving machinery or distracted workers.
Of course, the greater the risk of exposure to hazards, the better equipped an employee must be. Flammability and meltability are often major concerns, as clothing on the torso catching fire can lead to permanent injury.
Hearing protection is easy to overlook because injuries to the ear aren&#;t typically life-threatening. However, hearing loss is often permanent, and industrial environments can easily reach dangerous noise levels.
If an employee is going to be working near loud machines, like jackhammers, they need to be equipped with hearing protection. Even if an employee views it as unnecessary and doesn&#;t notice the damage excessive noise can cause, it&#;s important to keep them protected. A common issue is employees ignoring hearing safety and slowly, over a period of years, seeing a significant decline in their hearing that could have been prevented.
The above advice can serve as a good baseline for what a company ought to consider when equipping employees with protective clothing. However, while the advice given in this article is based on OSHA&#;s guidelines, companies should always research exactly which rules and regulations apply to their model and equip their employees at the required level or better.
If the required equipment is more robust than what is recommended in the previous section, this can raise the cost of equipping employees. However, rules and regulations are there for a reason. Many rules are only put in place after some type of workplace tragedy (or multiple tragedies) demonstrates their necessity. Following these rules helps keep employees safe and protects companies from liability.
A business should always actively understand its safety needs by identifying the types of work employees are likely to engage in and the hazards they might encounter. Some common workplace hazards include slippery surfaces, flammable or explosive materials, falling risks, harsh chemicals, flying debris (including slivers of metal) and heavy machinery.
Employees should be equipped so they&#;re protected against the most dangerous and most common hazards they&#;re likely to encounter. Although some PPE can have minor trade-offs (such as reducing breathability and range of motion), these inconveniences are usually more than worth it if they protect an employee against serious harm.
For ethical, legal and financial reasons, a business must take safety seriously. PPE can help prevent permanent injury and even save lives. In preventing even one or two such incidents, this equipment has paid for itself. Consider the delays caused by such serious injuries, the potential need to replace an injured party (and train their replacement) and the lawsuits that often follow these incidents. In serious cases, an employee injury could cost a business tens of thousands of dollars or more.
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Personal Protective Equipment. (). Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
PPE safety is the practice of ensuring a safe, working environment for employees and visitors through the use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Safety is paramount to all businesses across industries. Using PPEs, paired with inspections such as workplace and restaurant inspections, assessments like health and safety risk assessments, and analysis such as gap analysis&#;is essential to protect employees from risks and hazards.
According to the hierarchy of controls by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), PPE (sometimes also referred to as PPE equipment)&#;is recommended to be the last level of defense to prevent occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities, but some businesses combined it with other control measures to ensure a safe and healthy environment for their workers. Here are some benefits of using PPEs:
However, even the strictest controls will not necessarily eliminate all the risks associated with most job tasks and this is where the need for PPE must be evaluated. A hazard assessment can help identify which specialized PPE will be required. There are numerous types of workplace safety equipment available depending on the hazard exposure and work conditions. The following are basic PPE that can help protect employees:
PPE includes safety goggles and face shields and should be used for tasks that can cause eye damage or loss of vision, sprays of toxic liquids, splashes, and burns.
Safety Tips:
PPE includes full-face respirators, self-contained breathing apparatus, gas masks, N95 respirators, and surgical masks are used for a task that can cause inhalation of harmful materials to enter the body. This includes harmful gas, chemicals, large-particle droplets, sprays, splashes, or splatter that may contain viruses and bacteria such as COVID-19, viral infections, and more.
Safety Tips:
PPE includes the following categories to protect employees from physical hazards:
PPE includes hard hats and headgears and should be required for tasks that can cause any force or object falling to the head.
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Safety Tips:
PPE includes safety vests and suits that can be used for tasks that can cause body injuries from extreme temperatures, flames and sparks, toxic chemicals, insect bites and radiation.
Safety Tips:
PPE includes safety gloves and should be used for tasks that can cause hand and skin burns, absorption of harmful substances, cuts, fractures or amputations.
Safety Tips:
PPE includes knee pads and safety boots and should be used for tasks that can cause serious foot and leg injuries from falling or rolling objects, hot substances, electrical hazards, and slippery surfaces.
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PPE includes safety harnesses and lanyards and should be strictly used for tasks that can cause falling from heights and serious injury or death.
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PPE includes ear muffs and plugs and should be used for tasks that can cause hearing problems and loss of hearing.
Safety Tips:
Learn more about hearing protection.
Other examples of PPE include:
welding PPE
such as helmets and and flame-resistant clothing
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Workplace safety should begin with a hazard assessment. Once the hazards and risks have been identified, a plan can be put forward to prioritize and reduce the risk of injury. Useful systems and tools to perform hazard assessments include performing a risk assessment and a Job Safety Analysis (JSA).
The hierarchy of controls is a proven safety approach that helps protect employees. If elimination, substitution, engineering, and administrative controls are not enough to eliminate the risk, it is vital to choose the appropriate PPE carefully. Ensure employees are properly trained to use the safety equipment and be able to detect and report any damages before commencing work.
A toolbox talk about PPE is recommended to discuss the different kinds of PPE that can be used to minimize the likelihood and mitigate the effects of hazards. A toolbox talk template can help in assessing the sufficiency and availability of safety equipment for all employees.
Safety Officers can promote safety in the workplace by following PPE safety requirements:
These examples of PPE safety are based on a free PPE checklist provided by SafetyCulture for anyone to download and use for free.
Nature of work: Laboratory (Chemical Handling) Potential hazards at work:To give you a better idea, we&#;ve created a PPE checklist sample pdf report below:
Eliminate manual tasks and streamline your operations.
Giving personal protective equipment (PPE) for your workers alone is not enough to protect them from hazards, injuries, and accidents. This is especially true for industries such as construction, manufacturing, and healthcare. To make sure that their PPEs fully serve their functions, it&#;s crucial that your workers understand their proper use, maintenance, and disposal to protect themselves and the people around them. Thankfully, training now is made easy and convenient for you with online PPE courses that your workers can take any time and anywhere.
Here, you can use highly recommended premade courses that will cover the different types of PPE and demonstrate when and how to use them properly. Reinforcing PPE training will not only keep your workers safe from hazards but also boost productivity without any threat of unwanted incidents. Try Training, a mobile feature available on the SafetyCulture platform.
All Training courses can be customized to fit the needs of your organization and be shared with your team in minutes. Workers can access the lessons in these courses even offline.
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