Regulation Of Valbeveiliging, Gehoorbescherming And Other Ppes

By Author: veiligheid trigro
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Personal Protective equipment (PPE) is a device or equipment that is used by workers to protect them from health and safety hazards in a working environment. Generally, it comes in wide array of collection including but not limited to sunglasses, helmets, gloves, boots to safeguard workers from heights and chemical elements.

Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) 1984, Section 19 states the duty of employers to: “'where it is not practicable to avoid the presence of hazards at the workplace, [to] provide the employees with, or otherwise provide for the employees to have, such adequate personal protective clothing and equipment as is practicable to protect them against those hazards, without any cost to the employees.”

OSHA is requiring the use of PPE to lessen the exposure of employees to dangers at times when administrative and engineering controls are not applicable to reduce the exposure. IN this case, business owners have the obligation to decide if PPE must be utilized to secure the safety of the workers.

In the hierarchy of prevention for safety, including elimination, substitution, engineering ...
... and administration, PPE is regarded as the least way in avoiding work-related grievance or diseases.

When PPE is to be used, proper seminar or program must be done. The program tackles the danger present in the workplace, how to use PPE, maintenance, training of the workers as well as tracking of the effectiveness of the program.

Types of Personal Protective equipment:
1. Skin protection: Sunburn cream, long sleeves clothes, hats
2. Valbeveiliging (Fall protection): harness and fall arrest equipments
3. Head protection: caps, hoods, hats, helmets
4. Foot: Shoes, boots
5. Hand: Barrier creams and gloves
6. Gehoorbescherming (hearing protection): plugs, ear muffs
7. Eye: goggles, spectacles, visors, shields
8. Respiratory: airline, half or full face, disposable

What are the responsibilities of the employer when issuing PPEs?

- Management must make sure that the requirement for PPE is evaluated by a competent person whether there are strategies that can be implemented instead of protective devices.
- Management must get professional advice from authorized agent on what type of PPE must be used on a designated job
- Proper supervision and implementation of PPE rules
- Training is given to heads as well as workers
- Evaluation of the efficiency of protective devices on a regular basis
- Protective equipments are also issued to visitors that could be harmed in the workplace
- All the designated devices conform with the present standards and must be stamped with compliance mark

Based on OSHA 1996 regulation, employees must:
1. Utilize the device on how he was instructed
2. Not misuse or cause any damage to the device or clothing
3. Be aware of any incident related to damage, malfunction, and proper cleaning of the equipment