“Personal Protection Equipment” Is A Second-Best Solution

A  group that promotes worker health and safety makes the case that personal protective equipment, “PPE,” is a poor second as a solution for hazardous construction and manufacturing conditions. PPE, which includes things like respirators, ear plugs and safety glasses, belongs “at the bottom of the hierarchy of controls,” according to the Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund of North America. They say that it’s the least reliable form of protection, that typically it’s uncomfortable and often burdensome to wear, that it often creates its own safety problems, and that it shifts the burden of protection from the employer to the worker. Instead, they advocate engineering controls and finding substitutes for hazardous chemicals as the preferred methods for addressing dust, noise, toxic fumes and other occupational hazards. The Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund of North America is a consortium with trustees from the management ranks of unionized companies as well as organized labor.