Module 1: Occupational Hygiene - Section 4: Personal Protective Equipment

OH4.3: Suitability of Personal Protective Equipment

WHEN IS PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT SUITABLE FOR USE?

Personal protective equipment is ideal in the following instances:

• to handle emergencies;
• during maintenance where there may be unusually high exposures;
• when engineering controls are temporarily out of order;
• when a worker is going to be exposed to hazard for a short period;
• when it is the only form of protection available;
• when it is used to supplement other control measures.

Use of personal protective equipment as control measures should be considered as a last resort because:

• It does not remove or reduce the hazard at source and therefore does not really address the hazard;
• Failure of personal protective equipment would expose workers to harm;
• There is generally poor compliance with use of personal protective equipment on the part of workers; it can give a false sense of security;
• It shifts responsibility from employer to employee;
• It often makes working uncomfortable;
• It relies on the subjective effort of the worker to use effectively
• It is often not maintained or kept in a hygienic state.

As can be seen, use of personal protective equipment is appropriate in ad hoc or extraordinary circumstances or when it is not possible to adequately protect against exposures by preferred engineering and design methods.

General Introduction to Occupational Health: Occupational Hygiene, Epidemiology & Biostatistics by Prof Jonny Myers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License