Personal protective equipment examples

The provision and use of properly selected personal protective equipment is normally regarded as back-up for the previous measures. Refer to Chapter 13. In some situations it is the only reasonably practicable measure to ensure personal safety and its use may be a legal requirement. Examples are ... 

Increased maintenance cost for process equipment due to safety requirements (for example, safety permits, cleaning and purging equipment, personal protective equipment, training, and restricted access to process areas). 

Provisions must be made to ensure worker protection for a process located in a containment building. For example, the atmosphere in the containment structure should be monitored for hazardous vapors, operations should be remotely controlled from outside the containment structures, access should be restricted, and proper personal protective equipment should be used when entry into the containment structure becomes necessary. 

Personal protective equipment (PPE) Devices and apparel worn by employees to prevent or reduce exposure to health and safety hazards in any adverse environment. Examples include respirators, gloves, chemical-resistant overalls, earplugs, and safety glasses. 

The development and implementation of safety procedures for non-routine work are required by OSHA and EPA. These specifically include hot work (such as welding), lockout or tagout, line-breaking, and confined-space entry. Other examples of non-routine work for which procedures should be developed would be excavation, electrical hot work (on energized conductors), hot-tapping (on pressurized piping), and, in some instances, personal protective equipment. 

If chemical agent detector dogs are demonstrated to be able to reliably detect CWM at very low concentrations, this capability could be applied to assessing large CWM burial sites. For example, it is to be expected that some of the sites, or portions of some of the sites, are free of chemical agent because no CWM was buried in that section of the burial or only empty CWM containers were buried there.8 If chemical detector dogs could reliably confirm the absence of CWM, the excavation and removal of objects from portions of the burial pits so identified could possibly be carried out with reduced personal protective equipment and without other precautions normally taken for CWM excavation (negative pressure enclosures, for example). 

For those companies using a computer to inventory raw materials, we recommend that the HMIS information be incorporated into the program for each raw material. The ratings and the required protective equipment will take eight characters on the printout. They will consist of the letters "H. F, R and P to denote health, flammability, reactivity and personal protective equipment, followed by the specific hazard rating and protective equipment designation. For example ... 

For those companies not using a computer to generate batch tickets, the person preparing the batch ticket should have ready access to the notebook containing the HMIS information. Then when the batch ticket is prepared, the information may be entered on the ticket in the manner described earlier. That is. the following designations. H for health. F for flammability. R for reactivity and P for personal protective equipment, should be used as prefixes with the specific numbers and letter for personal protection following. For example ... 

Similarly to the procedure in case of unforeseen events, there are a number of actions to be taken in the case of foreseeable exposure situations, for example, during maintenance work. Because there is a potential for increased exposure, the employer - in consultation with the workers or their representatives - has to take preventive measures in order to minimize the exposure. Workers have to be provided with personal protection equipment as far as necessary. It must never be a permanent measure. 

Finally, it is apparent that requirements of federal regulatory agencies (OSHA, FDA) not primarily concerned with emergency response to low-frequency events like chemical or biological terrorism nevertheless have a substantial influence on response capabilities. The characteristics and rules for use of personal protective equipment, for example, fall under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The investigational (IND) status of some very specific treatments, present and future, will hamper their use in mass-casualty situations. Furthermore, in the case of many treatments, collection of the data on efficacy necessary for full FDA approval will not be possible for ethical reasons or economically attractive to a potential manufacturer because of limited market potential. 

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