Properly Designed PPE for the Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

Abstract Promoting and maintaining a safe work environment in the oil and gas industry involves many facets. Strong safety leadership influences behaviors and contributes to an effective safety culture. Effective procedures and training are also important contributors to ensuring a safe work environment. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is recognized as the last line of defense in the hierarchy of controls. Nevertheless, it is an important element in a risk reduction program. It's therefore critical that PPE be selected to address the unique risks for the work performed. Hand and finger injuries are unfortunately common in oilfield services and they consistently constitute the largest percentage of injuries in our company. Hand and finger injuries are typically caused by impact, caught between items (pinching), cuts, and punctures. Great strides have been made recently in developing hand PPE that provides improved impact protection, numerous gloves offer some degree of cut and puncture resistance, and some gloves offer both impact and cut and puncture protection. The information available from glove manufacturers about their products is voluminous and often times confusing. This paper describes some of the tests that are used to measure the cut and puncture resistance of a glove and how to use the test results for evaluating one glove against another. We also describe our work with a glove manufacturer to design a product that meets our specific needs.