Personal Protective Equipment

Personal protective equipment (PPE) refers to protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garment or equipment designed to protect the wearer’s body from injury by blunt impacts, electrical hazards, heat, chemicals, and infection, for job-related occupational safety and health purposes, and in sports, martial arts, combat, etc. Personal armor is combat-specialized protective gear. In British legislation the term PPE does not cover items such as armour. The terms “protective gear” and “protective clothing” are in many cases interchangeable; “protective clothing” is applied to traditional categories of clothing, and “gear” is a more general term and preferably means uniquely protective categories, such as pads, guards, shields, masks, etc. Items such as fire extinguishers, first aid kits are equipment to support the personal protection of the subject. Police use handcuffs, tasers, battens and handguns as PPE.

The use 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.

DEA agents wearing Level B hazmat suits.

Biological hazard protection

Protective equipment for biological hazards includes masks worn by medical personnel (especially in surgery to avoid infecting the patient but also to avoid exposing the personnel to infection from the patient.) Gloves, frequently changed, are used to prevent infection but also transfer between patients.

One measure to reduce the risks of transmitting skin microorganisms from one person to another is in the use of single use disposable blood pressure cuff covers. Reports of hospitals reducing their hospital acquired infection rate by nearly 50% through the use of disposable protective covers for blood pressure cuffs have been reported.

Ballistic

Ballistic personal protective equipment (or armor) is used in combat by soldiers and in lesser conflicts by law enforcement.

Flying debris or splashing liquids

A face shield protects from flying debris such as produced by cutting, welding, chipping, or sanding, and protects against splashes or spray of liquids. Safety glasses provide protection for the eyes and may additionally be tinted to block UV or laser light. Goggles seal tightly about the eyes and provide superior protection from dust, dirt, and fumes.

Sharp injuries

Meat packers and others who routinely use hand-held knives in their work may use mail gloves to protect the hands from cuts.

Blunt trauma

Law enforcement and Corrections officers wear Blunt Trauma PPE for crowd management, civil disturbances, cell extractions, riot control, violent disturbances, and other emergency response operations. To assure their equipment is safe, end-users and industry refer to standards:

Canadian Standards Association CAN/CSA Z617-06 Personal Protective Equipment for Blunt Trauma.
Home Office Scientific Development Branch: HOSDB Blunt Trauma Protector Standard for UK Police (2007) – Limb and Torso Protectors 20-07.
National Institute of Justice NIJ Standard 0115.00 Stab Resistance of Personal Body Armor – Spike Level 1.

Fire

Sports

Protective clothing is also worn for contact sports, such as ice hockey and American football. Baseball players wear sliding shorts and a cup under their pants. See baseball clothing and equipment, cuirass, goalie mask, jockstrap. Law in many countries requires protective headgear and eyewear for riding a motorcycle.

Respiratory protection

Air-Purifying Respirator

Respirators such as “gas masks” and particulate respirators filter chemicals and gases or airborne particles. 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 used when adequate ventilation is not available or other engineering control systems are not feasible.

In the United Kingdom an organization that has extensive expertise in respiratory protective equipment is the Institute of Occupational Medicine. This expertise has been built on a long-standing and varied research programme that has included the setting of workplace protection factors to the assessment of efficacy of masks available through high street retail outlets.

Sets of equipment

Chainsaw protection (especially a helmet with face guard, hearing protection, kevlar chaps, anti-vibration gloves, and chainsaw safety boots). Specific information about chainsaw protection is given in the chainsaw safety clothing article.
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 is offered by leather gloves with long gauntlets and by some way of keeping bees from crawling up one’s trouser legs. In extreme cases, shirts and trousers are also fabricated to serve as barriers to the bees’ stingers.
Diving equipment (scuba gear)

Other personal protective equipment