Personal protective equipment (PPE) is regulated by OSHA through Standard 1910.132. This standard covers a wide range of personal protective equipment, “including personal protective equipment for eyes, face, head, and extremities, protective clothing, respiratory devices, and protective shields and barriers.” (1910.132[a]) The standard explains who is responsible to maintain and replace the equipment, how the equipment must be maintained, and what the employer and employees roles are in personal protective equipment use.

To start, it is important to understand what hazards are present, and which personal protective equipment is required in which situations. There are some very general guidelines in this standard, but it is also important to review the standards relevant to the actions being performed, in order to properly identify the required personal protective equipment. To help you in this capacity, it might make sense to have your facility and procedures audited by a qualified third party auditing firm with a specialty in OSHA standards.

It is also important to note that most personal protective equipment is required to be purchased and maintained by the employer. Additionally, adequate training is required to be provided by the employer. For these reasons, it is important to implement and track training and maintenance policies.

If you have any questions about your personal protective equipment (PPE) policies or procedures, or if you would like your facility audited to ensure you have no hazards which are unaccounted for, please contact us. And if you have anything to add about personal protective equipment, please leave a comment.

Policies surrounding personal protective equipment must be carefully created and consistently followed to protect employees at work. Personal protective equipment is a last line of defense for employees working in potentially dangerous jobs, and without this equipment a simple malfunction or slip of the hand can turn into a tragedy.

When creating a personal protective equipment policy, it is important to start by looking at OSHA Standard 1910.132, which governs general personal protective equipment requirements. After this standard has been reviewed, it is then time to consider your specific company and the operations which you perform. Based upon your industry and your business, you then need to review the OSHA standards for each of those operations to determine what, if any, further personal protective equipment requirements are listed in those standards.

Once you have determined the additional requirements as per the relevant standards, you need to integrate these requirements into an effective personal protective equipment policy, keeping Standard 1910.132 in mind as you create it. By creating a policy in this way, you are ensuring that each person working in your facility is properly protected with personal protective equipment.

Finally, you must make sure that all equipment is regularly checked and maintained, to ensure it is still working properly. Gloves with holes, for instance, will not be very effective if an employee comes into contact with fire.

If you have any questions about your current personal protective equipment policy, or if you would like to establish a personal protective equipment policy, please contact us. Please leave a comment if you have any other best practices for creating an effective personal protective equipment policy.

Personal protective equipment is often the only safeguard for employees from potentially serious hazards. This equipment is worn on the body and in some way reduces or eliminates the potential for injury. It is designed to act as the last means of protecting oneself if all other safety measures should fail.

Unfortunately, many employers and employees do not take personal protective equipment seriously enough. Personal protective equipment can be cumbersome to employees trying to work, creating a situation where work takes longer due to restrictive clothing or bulky gloves. Coupled with the feeling that they will not misuse equipment they use on a daily basis, it is all too common that these employees stop using certain pieces of personal protective equipment. Similarly, employers have been known to rely too heavily on safety procedures and systems. But remember, no matter how many secondary systems, failsafes, and other mechanisms are in place, these systems can and do fail.

Another common problem we find with personal protective equipment is the quality of the equipment being used. Gloves, for instance, should not have holes in them and reflective vests should not have the reflectors ripped off from years of overuse. Apathy toward personal protective equipment is a very dangerous threat to everyone.

If you have not recently reviewed your Safety and Health Management System with a keen eye toward the personal protective equipment you are utilizing, it might be time to do it. If you have not updated your system recently, or if you have not reviewed your personal protective equipment, it might be worth contacting a professional organization for help.

If you have any questions about the importance of personal protective equipment, please contact us. And if you have anything to add about personal protective equipment, please leave a comment.

Acting as a last line of defense against injury for employees, personal protect equipment is often the only thing protecting employees from dangerous equipment, faulty systems, mislabeled tools, and themselves. No safety guideline can prevent employees from all faulty machinery or from human error, but properly utilized personal protective equipment can lessen the damage in an emergency situation, and can save an employee’s life in many situations.

Unlike normal safety procedures which generally involve external devices to detect or deter accidents and faults, personal protective equipment is generally worn by the person at risk. And while a system can shut down, a facility can lose power, and a label can fall off, basic personal protective equipment like gloves, body suits, helmets, or glasses are generally not susceptible to these same worries. And as helpful as all of these systems and procedures are, if an employee misuses a tool or enters an area by accident, it can become easy to trigger an event which falls outside of the normal scope of a safety plan, leaving the employee at risk.

It is in these situations that people are most at risk, because they are left alone with no systems in place to protect them. And while many employees put themselves in these situations on a daily basis, few are ever actually injured or killed when they are wearing appropriate personal protective equipment. This equipment is easily the most important safety mechanism available, as it protects the employee at the time of an accident, after the failsafes have all failed.

So if you have not reviewed your personal protective equipment recently, and are concerned you could be using outdated or damaged equipment, please contact us so that we can review your procedures and equipment to determine if there are any violations or unsafe practices. Should you have anything to add about the importance of personal protective equipment, please leave a comment.

While one of the simplest items to ensure compliance with in any safety and health management system, personal protective equipment is one of the most common issues during an audit. Whether outdated, worn beyond the minimum safety requirements, or improperly used, personal protective equipment that is not up to code can have devastating effects on both employers and employees. One of the main reasons people have so much trouble with personal protective equipment is that guidelines are scattered among a number of different standards, encompassing everything from confined spaces to lockout tagout. In addition, there is also Standard 1910.132, which lays out the minimum requirements for any personal protective equipment to be OSHA compliant.

One of the primary issues business owners have with the standards is the vagueness which surrounds 1910.132 and the extreme rigidity of individual standards. For instance, in 1910.132(c), OSHA states: “All personal protective equipment shall be of safe design and construction for the work to be performed.” But this extremely indistinct requirement is clarified dozens of times within other standards, meaning a company can be in compliance with 1910.132 but not in compliance with another standard. And while this seems a rather simple issue to fix, it can be difficult to go back through every single glove, helmet, and apron to ensure that they are all always being used in the right way at exactly the right time.

Thankfully, there are companies who specialize in OSHA compliance. And these companies are an excellent resource for business owners worried that they are out of compliance or worried that they might be misusing a piece of equipment. To get more information on safety audits and personal protective equipment, please contact us. And if you have anything to add about personal protective equipment, please leave a comment.

As we’ve previously discussed, personal protective equipment is of major concern to OSHA, and should be one of your primary concerns as a business owner in any field with potential safety hazards. Personal protective equipment can be the difference between a serious on the job injury and a non event, should something go awry during day to day operations. Unfortunately, there are so many different types of protective equipment with very specific uses, it can often be difficult to determine which equipment is necessary in which situations.

For instance, it might be obvious that a respirator is needed during an abrasive blasting job, but which respirator is correct? Is a simple mask sufficient, or is a full breathing apparatus needed? The same can go for hazmat suits; are the suits you are using up to code? The codes and requirements are constantly changing, as the field of protective equipment is ever evolving. What was sufficient five years ago may be woefully inadequate today. And, even if you are “up to code,” are you giving your employees the best equipment available to protect them?

If you have not recently checked, it might be a good idea to at least review your protective equipment. Believe us, you do not want a problem on the job site to unnecessarily injure an employee. Especially if something as simple as a pair of gloves or better glasses could have changed the outcome. If you have any questions about the personal protect equipment you are currently using, please contact us. And if you have anything to add to the discussion, please leave a comment.

Personal protective equipment is extremely important on the job site. The correct equipment keeps your employees safe and it keeps OSHA out of your hair. But what is the correct equipment, and when should it be used? OSHA answers that with standard 1910.132. This standard explains what is, and is not, required to be worn, where it must be worn, and whether you or your employees are required to maintain it. It also discusses what training is required, and how often you must have your company audited.

Their definitions, however, leave quite a bit of gray area. For instance, it states in 1910.132(c), “all personal protective equipment shall be of safe design and construction for the work to be performed.” Now, this is clearly important for a safe workplace, but how do you know if a piece of equipment is of “safe design and construction?” Well, you can look into what others in your field are using and hope they are using adequate protective gear, you can contact OSHA and hope to get clarification, or you can contact us and we will talk you through your issues.

You must also remember to get your third party safety audits completed, as stated in 1910.132(d)(2). These safety audits are important, as they not only satisfy this requirement, they also allow you to confirm that your workers are safe.

With these questions fresh in your head, take a look over your workplace and make sure everything is up to code. Then, take a look and see when your last third party audit was. If this information is all up to date and you have no questions of code, congratulate yourself. If not, don’t fret, just take a look at our services, then give us a call or shoot us an email and we can help ensure you are OSHA compliant and providing a safe work environment.