Page 77 - Occupational Health & Safety, June 2017

HAND PROTECTION
ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 Regulation Updates
We’re better equipped than ever before to provide hand protection to industrial workers. The biggest challenge is making sure regulations and standards around PPE and hand protection keep pace.
BY STEVE GENZER
www.ohsonline.com
JUNE 2017 | Occupational Health & Safety 73
Effective workplace hand protection concerns us all. The good news is that technologies, engineering, and materials involved in glove manufacturing change and improve all the
time. Testing methods always need to become better calibrated to measuring gloves’ protective qualities. While the risks workers face every day continue to be serious, improvements in protection technology are having a positive impact on the workplace, where proper PPE can reduce injuries. We’re better equipped than ever before to provide hand protection to indus- trial workers. The biggest challenge is making sure regulations and standards around PPE and hand pro- tection keep pace.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recently updated its national hand protection standards. ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 is the latest revision of a voluntary standard first published in 1999, then revised in 2005 and 2011. These standards help safety managers, employers, and workers to ensure they se- lect the right gloves for the right jobs.
Standards matter because the people who use and select gloves for the workplace rely on them to guide glove selection. Why? They’re experts in building cars or air conditioners, not in personal protection equip- ment, and the standards help them find the right gloves to keep their workers safe. New yarns, thinner materials, and advanced technologies increase glove
capabilities, meaning there are more options than ever before. If the job puts a worker’s hands at risk of cut, there are gloves designed specifically for that. If the threat is chemical exposure, there are gloves designed to protect against many of the most common and most dangerous chemicals. If the worker is at risk of cut and chemicals, there are gloves designed to pro- vide dual protection. This is a good thing for today’s workers, but it makes it difficult for safety managers faced with seemingly endless options for glove selec- tion. Standards can help put some structure around the process.
So much selection is a good thing for today’s workers, but it makes it difficult for safety managers faced with seemingly endless options. Standards can help put some structure around the process.
That sort of structure and clarity is invaluable.
Consider this: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor
1,
Statistics 30 percent of workers who suffered hand
injuries were wearing gloves that were inadequate, damaged, or the wrong type of glove for the hazard (70 percent were not wearing gloves at all). That’s un- acceptable. That’s a failure on multiple levels, from education to standards and regulations. There are too many good, tested glove options to allow statistics like that to exist.
The ANSI/ISEA 105 standard addresses the classification and testing of hand protection for specific performance properties related to chemi- cal and industrial applications. Simply put, it al- lows manufacturers to more accurately classify their gloves as they relate to specific performance metrics. The changes impacted some classifications more than others, and none more significantly than those around cut protection.
The update on cut resistance test methodologies acknowledged two different methods for testing cut resistance with two different test machines. The stan- dard ASTM F1790 allows for the use of a TDM and a CPPT test machine, while the revised ANSI/ISEA 105 establishes a single test method based on the ASTM F2992-15 that requires the TDM test machine exclu- sively. The latter will provide more consistent ratings
ANSELL