Personal protective equipment, or PPE, isn’t perfect. We feel that people should be aware of its potential flaws, so we’ve put together this article detailing what some of the limitations of PPE are.
It Doesn’t Completely Eliminate Harm
A common misconception about PPE is that it will completely protect you from harm. Although its goal is, at the very least, to reduce the level of injury or the amount of exposure one receives, this is rarely the case. A perfect example is fire-resistant clothing. This clothing can protect against many forms of fire- and heat-related hazards, but it’s not 100% fireproof. As a result, you might still get burned while using it. Fortunately, the damage will be significantly less because of it. The same idea applies to pretty much every other form of PPE.
It Can Offer a False Sense of Security
Many workers who use PPE at work have a false sense of security that they wouldn’t have if they were wearing no protection at all. People still need to be careful around dangerous objects regardless of the protection they’re wearing. Pretending as though one is working in their street clothes would remove that false sense of safety they might have. Hopefully, this line of thinking would reduce the risk of careless injuries.
It Might Introduce New Problems
Solutions to old problems often lead to the introduction of new problems. For example, requiring safety goggles that fully encompass the area around your eyes may result in slightly obscured vision, which could lead to you not seeing something coming at you that you would have otherwise seen. Other forms of PPE might restrict natural movement, elevate the level of heat stress, or even make it more difficult to breathe. PPE producers are constantly trying to find solutions to these problems, but some problems will always exist in one form or another.
It Needs To Be Worn Properly
We still need to cover one more top limitation of PPE: the fact that if you don’t wear PPE properly, it will lose its effectiveness. It’s not common to find an employee who blatantly disregards PPE rules, but you’ll still find quite a few who do so for what they consider to be good reasons. Sometimes, it’s because of the restrictions we mentioned in our previous point. PPE may also negatively affect one’s work output. However, the reason never outweighs the downside of workers getting needlessly injured when their PPE could have helped them avoid the situation altogether.
