Page 41 - Occupational Health & Safety, January/February 2020

Recognize the Value of Performance Standards
Knowing the true performance of PPE is critical to reducing the risk of injury.
“The hand protection market is growing at an accelerated pace, so we are the first to acknowledge that it can be challeng- ing for H&S managers and specifiers to navigate available options and choose the right protective product for the given task,” Bill VanMullekom, Executive Vice President at D3O US LLC said. “Performance standards are an essential tool for both PPE speci- fiers and manufacturers to ensure the decisions they make are the correct ones.”
Standards for cut, puncture, chemical, and thermal protection in gloves have existed in the U.S. for many years but, until recently, there was no performance standard for back of hand impact resis- tance. This gap has now been filled by ANSI/ISEA 138.
Cutting occupational injuries through the application of per- formance standards can also have a positive impact on a company’s bottom line. Fewer lost-time injuries means overall increased pro- ductivity. The financial impact of workplace injuries can be cal- culated with the $afety Pays tool developed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).3 This program uses a company’s profit margin, the average costs of an injury or illness, and an indirect cost multiplier to project the amount of sales a company would need to cover those costs.
Use Standards to Specify More Accurately
A common approach among H&S managers is to obtain a variety of gloves advertised as offering impact protection, ask employees to try them out, get feedback, and go with those most preferred by the workers—provided the gloves selected also satisfy budget con- straints. Then, if an employee sustains an injury, the cycle of field- testing to find the next preferred gloves has to start all over again.
Quite apart from the hit-and-miss nature of this method, the fact that a hand injury costs an average of $20,000 before surgery or lost time is factored in points to a clear financial benefit from more accurate specifying.
A manager’s objective is to deliver optimum protection for a job, rather than under- or over-protection. In the same way that thin cotton gloves would offer inadequate protection to a drill-
ing rig operator using a 50-pound wrench covered in oil, heavy- weight gloves with limited manual dexterity would not only risk the wrench sliding out of a worker’s hands, but they would also add unnecessary expense. ANSI/ISEA 138 helps eliminate such trial and error.
“Before the introduction of this standard,” Jill Clements, Chair of the ISEA Hand Protection Product Group said. “We had gloves with bumper guards which some manufacturers referred to as im- pact protection. When tested, they were found to offer protection against nothing more substantial than a knock. There’s a place for these gloves in the market but we now have an impact protection standard that gives clarity about how much energy is being trans- ferred through the glove.”
The simplified approach of the standard, with performance lev- els identified by pictograms on the gloves, has made testing and choosing the most appropriate protection a more precise exercise.
Educate Your Workplace
Faced with an array of gloves to choose from and no specific guid- ance, a worker may pick a pair he or she recognizes from a previous task, or simply grab the nearest available. Furthermore, two gloves may look the same to a wearer, but the difference in the level of protection offered can be significant.
Providing a core range of gloves along with education and vi- sual management on how they match glove selection to specific tasks reduces confusion and makes it easier for workers to select the most appropriate pair.
Continually Reassess Risks to Optimize Protection
Applying ANSI/ISEA 138 and other relevant hand protection stan- dards, such as ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 for mechanical protection, chemical protection, ignition resistance and vibration reduction, involves decisions to choose the right performance level of gloves for a particular task.
H&S managers can use standards and the performance levels within them as day-to-day tools—not only to help continually re- duce the risk of injuries, but also to help provide clarity when seek- ing approval on spend for worker protection.
“First, the standard provides a starting point that is reliable and evidence-based,” VanMullekom said. “End-users can then apply their own specific variables, such as workforce, tasks, budgets and working environments.
“Armed with this information, HSE’s are in a better position to align the different hazards or risks that a wearer might face to the protection of the appropriate performance level. In this way, the choices made can truly meet the needs of the workforce.”
Andrew Shields is an award-winning journalist and editor for D30. A collective of engineers, chemists, product designers and industry experts, D30 partners with world-class brands to create pioneering protective products that enable people to stay safe.
REFERENCES
1. www.bls.gov/spotlight/2019/25-years-of-worker-injury-illness-and-fa- tality-case-data/pdf/25-years-of-worker-injury-illness-and-fatality-case-data.pdf
2. www.iadc.org/isp/iadc-2018-isp-program-annual-report-index 3. www.osha.gov/safetypays
ANSI/ISEA 138 EXPLAINED
ANSI/ISEA 138 establishes minimum performance, clas- sification and labeling requirements for gloves designed to protect the knuckles and fingers from impact forces:
■ The standard evaluates gloves for their ability to dissipate impact forces and classifies them accordingly.
■ Impact performance is classified using three distinct levels: level 1 offers the lowest protection, level 3 offers the highest.
■ A glove’s level of performance is indicated with a mandatory pictogram which must be clearly visible and legible throughout the normal useful life of the glove.
OH&S specifiers can use the classifications to com- pare products on an equal basis. They can still choose from gloves that compete on factors such as design, durability, comfort and cost, but not on key performance characteristics.
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