Well OK, maybe I am being a little dramatic with the headline. But the point is that protective gear is something that cannot be taken lightly and is not a one-size- or one-type-fits-all scenario.

Not only do you need the right type or protective gear for the hazardous situation you’re in, but you also have to make sure the gear is of the right fit for each individual worker. Poorly fitting protection is almost as bad as no protection at all.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Program Executive Office Soldier via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Program Executive Office Soldier via a Creative Commons license]

But I know that a couple questions you may ask is, why are there differences in protection? Couldn’t one type of protective gear be sufficient for any hazard? And how do I know which type of protection would be best for my situation? Let’s take a look at the latter question first and discuss how to determine the kind of protection needed.

Hazard Assessment

Before you can hand out protective gear to your workers, you will have to actually pay attention to what your workers do and understand the hazards they work around – whether it be vapors, solid or liquid chemicals, flames, steam, heat, cold, animal feces, etc. And of course, there will be times where there will be multiple hazards at play at the same time, each of which may require their own protective gear fro another.

The hazard assessment has to be very deailed, especially if differnt parts of the work site work with different hazards. There needs to be an audit of the workers and who works with what hazards or with what equipment, and make sure that there is as little “cross-polination” as possible. While it is good to have workers who are versatile and can do whatever job they are placed into, the key to effective safety is not to let a worker wander from one part of the work site to another and be around divergent hazards yet have the same protective gear. Certainly, in the case of the jack-of-all-trades worker, he or she should only work with one set of hazards per shift and only rotate in each separate shift, provided he or she has the right protective gear for each shift.

Chemicals vs. Fire vs. Temperature

When you have the assessment completed and you have a better idea of the types of hazards that your workers face on the job, you can start ot determine the type of protective gear you might need. There is not universal gear that protects against all hazards, though you know there are some scientists working on it. Until they get that breakthrough, we’re stuck with having to make some choices based on the hazards and the types of fabric and properties of the protective wear that are required to keep workers safe.

There is protective gear that protects workers from chemicals, both liquid and solid, and there is gear that protects against poisonous gases from infecting the skin or entering the body through the skin or nostrils. Then of course you have the fabrics that protect against flame, fire and steam, and there is the gear that protects workers from excessive hot or cold temperatures. Each type of protective wear has its own properties and requirements of the fabric and stitching so they are most effective at doing their jobs, so its vitally important to evaluate your hazard assessment and make the best decision for your workers, individually and as a group.

Next time, I will go into a little more detail about the different types of fabric, qualities you would need in a fabric for the various hazards, and when do you repair protective clothing and when do you replace it?