The Importance of Personal Protective Equipment in the Workplace

Personal protective equipment (PPE) isn’t always an option. Many times, certain types of PPE are a legal requirement. Check your local laws to see which PPE is required and which PPE is optional.

With many hazards in the workplace, even if it isn’t always comfortable to wear PPE, it’s still important. Some hazards may not be apparent, or they may not happen often, but when they do happen, they can be very dangerous.

Staying Protected In the Workplace

If you oversee employees, it’s your job as the employer to make sure your workers use safety equipment. While it may not be possible for you to stay with each employee all of the time, you should encourage them to use their PPE, and you should provide high-quality PPE for their use.

If workers aren’t comfortable wearing PPE, or if they feel the PPE is unattractive, they’re less likely to use it. While you might not think style is an important part of PPE, it is, and PPE manufacturers understand this importance, so they work to create garments that aren’t unsightly.

Following are the five types of PPE:

1. Head Protection

Almost any construction site you walk by will be a sea of yellow hats. These specially designed hats keep the worker’s head and neck safe from impact. Most construction sites require anyone on site to wear a hat even if he or she isn’t actively working.

Depending on the workplace, there may be other safety features included with the hard hats, such as eye shields or earmuffs. Hard hats are considerably customizable, but the standard hard hat is put together to protect from falling or flying debris.

2. Respiratory Protection

When toxic substances are present, your workers have to have respiratory protection. Even if you can’t see, smell, or taste the danger, if it’s been determined that your workers need this protection, make sure you provide it.

Whether you’re being protected from dust, fumes, pesticides, spray paint, or some other harmful substance, having respiratory protection is essential. Any air contaminants can cause lung and other problems. If your worksite doesn’t have enough ventilation and there’s no other solution, you need respirators in order to protect those who are present.

3. Eye and Face Protection

The eyes and face are among the most sensitive parts of the body. It would help if you made sure to properly take care of the face and eyes by getting the necessary protection like face masks, eye shields, or safety glasses.

Metalworkers, woodworkers, and those working in various manufacturing fields are often in need of eye and face protection. You never know when a splinter or a shard might break loose and fly toward the face.

In any work area that’s dangerous or potentially dangerous, you need to provide face and eye protection as a safety precaution.

4. Hearing Protection

Because you can’t see hearing damage, it’s easy to overlook this important type of protection. Industrial noise can cause serious hearing damage that can’t be repaired. More than 20 million workers in the US are exposed to potentially harmful sound.

OSHA establishes occupational noise exposure standards and recommends workers only be exposed to sound at 85 decibels for a maximum of eight hours. Hearing protection is most often in the form of earmuffs or earplugs. Make sure to use earmuffs in order to protect against high-frequency sounds and earplugs in order to protect against low-frequency sounds.

5. Hands and Skin

Hands and skin come in contact with potentially dangerous chemicals or harsh soap. If you want to protect your hands and skin, there are different types of gloves that you can wear. Rubber gloves, cut-resistant gloves, heat-resistant gloves, and chainsaw gloves are some of the options that you can use in order to protect your hands and skin.

With more than 150,000 hand injuries happening each year, it’s important to protect your hands properly. Injuries aren’t the only problem that occurs in the workplace. Skin maladies like skin cancer, contact dermatitis, and other skin injuries or infections follow right behind actual injuries when it comes to hand and skin problems.

Importance of Keeping Your Workplace Safe

Beyond the fact that you want your workers to remain safe, there are other reasons you need to keep your workplace safe and up to standards. If someone is injured on your watch and it’s found that you could’ve done something about it or you failed to do something you were supposed to do, you could face lawsuits.

Not only are lawsuits time-consuming, but they can damage your company’s reputation and take a lot of money to settle depending on the situation. If you’re in the right, you have a much better chance to come out on top of the issue, but if you’ve neglected taking care of your duties, you could have big problems.

Aside from the issues you’ll have to deal with when it comes to lawsuits, if you do face lawsuits, this can cause issues with employee morale. If employees don’t believe you’re doing everything you can in order to protect them, this can cause major challenges. Many times, this will reduce workplace productivity and mean you won’t be able to hit your numbers and make good on promises you’ve made as a supplier.

It’s important not to use inferior products when you make your PPE order. While it may be attractive to see big discounts on your PPE order, make sure that you test the product and see how well it performs. For example, if the abrasion-resistant fabric doesn’t do the job, then your employees can get cuts and server lacerations. Remember, you pay for what you get, so don’t go cheap! protect your employees and pay the money necessary to get the equipment you need in order to make your workplace as safe as possible.

Employees who work in a safe workplace are happier and more productive than those who don’t like coming to work.

Maintaining a Safe Workplace

If you want to maintain a safe workplace, make sure that your employees have the PPE they need. This includes all five types of PPE, as needed at your particular workplace. Providing the PPE to your employees is one thing, but making sure that employees make use of it is another. Because of this extra challenge, it would help if you also put programs in place that reward workers who embrace the safe workplace.

People tend to go with what they know, and because personal protective equipment, especially the newer kind, sometimes runs counter to this for people, it takes a change in workplace culture to make that happen. Safety programs that reward safe workers are a good way to help change the workplace culture for the better, helping make sure that workers use every type of PPE that they need in order to stay safe.

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