Personal protective equipment (PPE)

January 9, 2024
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Unkategorisiert

Personal protective equipment, or PPE for short, is an essential part of employee protection and an important factor in reducing the dangers and stresses associated with practical work. It has become increasingly important in recent years, as it protects workers from health and safety hazards.

PPE has many advantages – for the user/employee primarily by preventing pain (e.g. through cut protection gloves), protecting against long-term damage (e.g. hearing protection) or even job loss and for the employer by reducing sick days or loss of work performance.

What types of PPE protection are there?
There is now PPE for almost every part of the body – the most important of which are

Foot and leg protection (e.g. with safety shoes)
Head and neck protection (safety helmet)
Hearing protection (e.g. earmuffs)
Eye and face protection (e.g. protective goggles)
Hand and arm protection (e.g. with cut-resistant gloves)
Skin protection (e.g. with special skin creams)
Fall protection (e.g. through seat harness)
Protection against drowning and sinking (e.g. by restraining device, seat harness)
Respiratory protection (e.g. protective mask)
Protection against the cold (e.g. with warm clothing)

When should PPE be used?
As a rule, PPE is only used when all substitute (e.g. use of less hazardous cleaning agents), technical (e.g. protective grids, noise encapsulation, etc.) and organizational measures (e.g. spatial separation, shortening the time spent in the danger zone, etc.) for hazard avoidance do not provide sufficient protection and residual hazards exist (according to the STOP principle) that can be reduced more on a personal level.

The determination of when, where and which PPE is required is generally determined, assessed and defined in the course of the workplace evaluation. In case of doubt, however, it is always better to use PPE once too often than too little.

Who has what obligations?
Employers – have the legal obligation (in accordance with the Employee Protection Act – ASchG) to ensure suitable and effective employee protection (through evaluation, assessment, definition of measures and instruction of those at risk) and to record this in the safety and health protection documents (SiGe document). The employer must make all PPE available to employees free of charge (pay attention to CE marking), instruct them in its correct use and have its reliable function and condition checked regularly (e.g. PPE against falls from a height, anchor points, rope safety system).

All authorized employees (note – this can also be a skilled worker without disciplinary management responsibility who supervises an apprentice!) are then responsible for the practical instruction and control of the defined and necessary measures (depending on the area of responsibility).

And every employee – must adhere to the specifications and measures, report (near) accidents and inform their supervisor of new hazards. It is therefore particularly important to use PPE reliably and to maintain it and check its condition regularly.

Which legal regulations must be observed?
Based on the Employee Protection Act (essentially §69 + 70 ASchG), the obligations are specifically regulated in the PPE Ordinance (PSA-V).

We therefore clearly recommend the use and regular maintenance/inspection of PPE – so that you and your employees return home from work healthy every evening.

To make sure you don’t miss any more appointments in future, download the MyBuilding24 app. There you can record all your devices requiring inspection and maintenance and manage the associated appointments. With a complete list of maintenance work available at all times, you are always on the safe side.