PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT - PPE
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is protective clothing, helmets, goggles, or other garments or equipment designed to protect the wearer's body from injury or infection. The hazards addressed by protective equipment include physical, electrical, heat, chemicals, biohazards, and airborne particulate matter.
The purpose of personal protective equipment is to reduce employee exposure to hazards when engineering controls and administrative controls are not feasible or effective to reduce these risks to acceptable levels. PPE is needed when there are hazards present.
PPE has a serious limitation that it does not eliminate the hazard at the source and may result in employees being exposed to the hazard if the equipment fails.