Person Protective Equipment & Requirements
By Christina Keyes, Keyes To Safety LLC

OSHA requires the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering and administrative controls cannot provide protection by reducing exposure(s) to permissible limits.  Employers must determine if PPE should be used to protect their workers by completing a Job Hazard Analysis.  PPE programs must be implemented addressing standard PPE requirements along with special situation requirements.

PPE that may be required:
Head Protection

• Workers must wear hard hats when overhead, falling, or flying hazards exist or when danger of electrical shock is present.
• Inspect hard hats routinely for expiration date, dents, cracks, or deterioration.
• If a hard hat has taken a heavy blow or electrical shock, you must replace it even when you detect no visible damage.
• Maintain hard hats in good condition; do not drill; clean with strong detergents or solvents; paint; or store them in extreme temperatures. More than 3 stickers is an offensive to stability and is a violation by OSHA.
• Do not wear your hard hat backwards unless specifically approved by the hard hat manufacturer and your employer, must have ANSI stamp designating it to be reverse fitting (typically used by welders)

Eye and Face Protection

• Workers must wear only ANSI approved safety glasses, face shields or goggles for welding, cutting, nailing (including pneumatic), or when working with concrete and/or harmful chemicals and to protect against flying particles. Look for Z87 stamped on the frames.
• Eye and face protectors are designed for particular hazards. Be sure to select the proper type to match the hazard that is present.
• Always replace poorly fitting or damaged safety glasses as soon as possible.
• Workers needing corrective lenses must either wear ANSI approved safety glasses with prescription lenses and frames or wear ANSI approved goggles designed to be worn over their regular prescription glasses.

Foot Protection

• Employers may designate for workers to wear shoes or boots with slip-resistant and puncture-resistant soles to prevent slipping and puncture wounds.
• Safety-toed shoes are recommended to prevent crushed toes when working with heavy rolling equipment or falling objects.
• Chemical resistant shoes or NFPA rated boots may also be mandated.

 
Hand Protection

• High-quality gloves can prevent injury. Make sure that gloves should fit snugly.
• Always inspect gloves for cuts, tears and discoloration that might indicate excessive wear.
• Hands must be clean before putting gloves on and always thoroughly clean glove exteriors before removing them.
• Glove gauntlets should be taped for working with fiberglass materials.
• Workers should always wear the right gloves for the jobs (for example, heavy-duty rubber for concrete work, welding gloves for welding). Check the Safety Data Sheet (SDS, formerly called MSDS) for detailed information.
• Never use petroleum-based products (Vaseline) under gloves. They can trap chemicals against your skin if they get into your gloves

Fall Protection

• Use a safety harness system for fall protection.
• Where fall prevention cannot be installed, use a “personal fall arrest system” (PFAS). A PFAS includes an anchorage, full body harness, and connector such as a lanyard or lifeline.
• A PFAS must be rigged to limit falls to 6 feet or less without contacting any lower level and limit the arresting forces on the worker to 1,800 pounds or less.
• PFAS components, including safety harnesses, should be inspected before each use for wear, damage and other deterioration.
• PFAS should be designed, installed, and used, under the supervision of a qualified person.

Body Protection:

• Clothing to protect the body should consist at a minimum of long work pants and a sleeved shirt. When hazardous liquids, gases, vapors, fire/spark, or debris are present, the level of protection needed increases. This may include garments of Tyvek, Nomex, or PVC.
• For jobs that leave clothes very contaminated, bring a set of clean clothes to change into at the end of the day. Wash contaminated clothing separately.

Hearing Protection:

• Wherever it is not feasible to reduce the noise levels or duration of exposures, ear protective devices shall be provided and used. Ear protective devices inserted in the ear shall be fitted or determined individually by competent persons.

Respiratory Protection

• Select the correct respirator based on the hazard.
• Inspect the respirator for missing or worn respirator parts.
• Depending on the type of respirator, the employee must be medically cleared, trained and respirator fit tested prior to respirator use.
• Do not share respirators and only use the respirator that you have been fitted for.

 
To maintain quality of PPE:

• Maintain PPE in a clean sanitary, serviceable condition.
• All items have expiration periods, please check dates of expiration/manufacturing against the Manufacturer’s recommendations.
• Replace PPE if showing signs of wearing, cracking, chipping, fading, instability, or any form of misuse.
• Make sure to have PPE meet applicable recognized performance standards, such as ANSI, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Mine Safety and Health Administration, etc.

 
Do Not:

• Do not use PPE in lieu of sound engineering and manufacturing practices.
• Do not use PPE without proper training in its use and limitations.
• Do not use damaged or inferior equipment.

.....Is the Control of Hazardous Energy, (29 CFR 1910.147) which is the practices and procedures necessary to disable machinery or equipment, thereby preventing the release of hazardous energy while employees perform servicing and maintenance activities.

Hazardous energies are: electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, thermal, and other energy sources.
29 CFR 1910.333 lists the specific requirements to protect employees working on electric circuits and equipment. This section requires workers to use safe work practices when employees are exposed to electrical hazards while working on, near, or with conductors or systems that use electric energy.

Why is controlling hazardous energy sources important?

• Employees servicing or maintaining machines or equipment may be exposed to serious physical harm or death if hazardous energy is not properly controlled.
• Craft workers, machine operators, and laborers are among the 3 million workers who service equipment and face the greatest risk.*
• Compliance with the lockout/ tagout standard prevents an estimated 120 fatalities and 50,000 injuries each year. Workers injured on the job from exposure to hazardous energy lose an average of 24 workdays for recuperation.*
• Control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout), general industry #5 of top 10 OSHA Violations for 2015*
• OSHA Workplace Violation Fines*
  • Serious violations hold a minimum of a $7,000 dollar fine.
  • Minimum fine for a willful violation is $5,000 and can be as much as $70,000 if no deaths resulted from the violation. If an employee dies as a result of the violation, criminal charges as well as a fine of $250,000 – $500,000 can be issued
  • When a company produces a similar violation to one previously cited, they will be issued a “repeated violation” fine. A repeated violation fine can cost up to $70,000 but will depend on the severity of the initial violation.

How can you protect workers?
Each employer has the flexibility to develop an energy control program suited to the needs of the particular workplace and the types of machines and equipment being maintained or serviced.
■ Develop, implement, and enforce an energy control program.
■ Use lockout devices for equipment that can be locked out. Tagout devices may be used in lieu of lockout devices only if the tagout program provides employee protection equivalent to that provided through a lockout program.
■ Ensure that new or overhauled equipment is capable of being locked out.
■ Develop, implement, and enforce an effective tagout program if machines or equipment are not capable of being locked out.
■ Develop, document, implement, and enforce energy control procedures.
■ Use only lockout/tagout devices authorized for the particular equipment or machinery and ensure that they are durable, standardized, and substantial.
■ Ensure that lockout/tagout devices identify the individual users.
■ Establish a policy that permits only the employee who applied a lockout/tagout device to remove it.
■ Inspect energy control procedures at least annually.
■ Provide effective training as mandated for all employees covered by the standard.
■ Comply with the additional energy control provisions in OSHA standards when machines or equipment must be tested or repositioned, when outside contractors work at the site, in group lockout situations, and during shift or personnel changes.

Sequence of Lockout
(1) Notify all affected employees that servicing or maintenance is required on a machine or equipment and that the machine or equipment must be shut down and locked out to perform the servicing or maintenance.
(2) The authorized employee shall refer to the company procedure to identify the type and magnitude of the energy that the machine or equipment utilizes, shall understand the hazards of the energy, and shall know the methods to control the energy.
(3) If the machine or equipment is operating, shut it down by the normal stopping procedure (depress the stop button, open switch, close valve, etc.).
(4) De-activate the energy isolating device(s) so that the machine or equipment is isolated from the energy source(s).
(5) Lock out the energy isolating device(s) with assigned individual lock(s).
(6) Stored or residual energy (such as that in capacitors, springs, elevated machine members, rotating flywheels, hydraulic systems, and air, gas, steam, or water pressure, etc.) must be dissipated or restrained by methods such as grounding, repositioning, blocking, bleeding down, etc.
 (7) Ensure that the equipment is disconnected from the energy source(s) by first checking that no personnel are exposed, then verify the isolation of the equipment by operating the push button or other normal operating control(s) or by testing to make certain the equipment will not operate.
 (8) The machine or equipment is now locked 
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Restoring Equipment to Service
When the servicing or maintenance is completed and the machine or equipment is ready to return to normal operating condition, the following steps shall be taken.
(1) Check the machine or equipment and the immediate area around the machine to ensure that nonessential items have been removed and that the machine or equipment components are operationally intact.
(2) Check the work area to ensure that all employees have been safely positioned or removed from the area.
(3) Verify that the controls are in neutral.
(4) Remove the lockout devices and reenergize the machine or equipment.
Note: The removal of some forms of blocking may require re-energization of the machine before safe removal.
(5) Notify affected employees that the servicing or maintenance is completed and the machine or equipment is ready for use.
*For more information and statistics refer to website www.osha.gov