Keep Your Employees Safe: A Personal Protective Equipment Guide

What is PPE?
PPE stands for personal protective equipment. This wearable gear protects workers from potential health and safety hazards such as illness, infection, chemicals, burns, and airborne particulates. There are many types of PPE on the market today including gloves, masks, face shields, goggles, and coveralls. The specific types of PPE worn vary by industry, but they all have the same intent - to keep workers safe!

Why is PPE Necessary?
Simply put, PPE helps protect your employees - your most important asset! PPE greatly reduces exposure to potential workplace hazards and the injuries and illnesses that may result. This helps create a safer, healthier environment which is not only every employee’s right but is also required by law.

Types of PPE & What They’re Used For
The EFI Wholesale Marketplace currently offers four common types of personal protective equipment as detailed below. Please see product pages for full details on proper product use and limitations.

Eye/Face PPE                       

• What it is: Face shields and goggles - equipment designed to protect your face and vision.
• What it protects from: Goggles and shields protect the wearer’s eyes from hazardous splashes, flying debris, spray, dust, wind, and spatter. Shields have the added benefit of deterring people from touching their faces, preventing the spread of disease. In a high-risk environment, they may also be paired with a 3-ply mask for extra protection.
• What’s available: EFI currently offers lightweight, protective face shields that may be used for both industrial and personal protection.               

Hand PPE

• What it is: Gloves and sanitizers - gear to protect the wearer’s hands as well as limit the spread of contamination to others
• What it protects from: Gloves protect from bacteria, food, chemicals, burns, cuts, and contamination, while sanitizers (with 70% alcohol) have the power to kill viruses (including COVID-19).
• What’s available: EFI currently offers latex-free gloves to be used in home and commercial industries including food service, electronics, and science. They are non-sterile and, therefore, may not be used in a medical setting. EFI also offers 70% alcohol hand sanitizer that kills COVID-19 & 99.99% of most illness-causing
  germs.

Body PPE

• What it is: Protective clothing to keep you covered from head to toe
• What it protects from: Dry particulates, light liquid splashes, and bacteria that may stick to clothing. Coveralls also protect others from any bacteria or particles currently on the wearer’s clothing, limiting the spread.
• What’s available: EFI currently offers hooded, disposable coveralls in a variety of sizes.

Respiratory PPE

• What it is: Face masks - to be worn to protect your nose, mouth, and lungs
• What it protects from: Masks protect from droplets, splashes, sprays of bodily fluids, allergens, airborne particulates, and pollutants.
• What’s available: EFI currently offers 3-ply disposable masks intended for daily use in commercial and home settings.

PPE Quick Tips

For utmost safety, proper workplace training on PPE use, maintenance, and disposal is required. However, whether using PPE at home or in the workplace, always keep these quick tips in mind:

• Never Rely on PPE Alone
  Don’t rely on PPE alone for workplace hazard protection. It should be your FINAL layer of protection after the use of safeguards, controls, and traditional workplace safety practices.
• Perform Regular Inspections
  Yes, it may sound tedious and unnecessary, but regular inspections of PPE are highly recommended. 9 times out of 10 there will be no holes, tears, or defects, but it is worth the check every time. This may be the difference between health and illness, or a great workday and a workplace injury.
• Make Sure it Fits
  Proper fit not only ensures proper protection and comfort but also increases the likelihood that employees will keep their PPE properly in place all day.
• Follow Disposal Guidelines
  From knowing when to call it quits with that mask or those gloves, to safely removing them to avoid contamination, to properly discarding them when you’re done, those guidelines are there to keep you safe - so don’t ignore them!