Electrical Safety: Top 10 PPEs for Electricians, Engineers, and Technicians

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) protects the user against safety risks. Given below is the list of top 10 PPEs Everyone should be familiar with.

Helmet

The helmet plays a vital role in protecting your most vital and sensitive organ: The Brain! Head injuries are dangerous and they are a serious threat to your life. You should remember following points while wearing helmets:

  1. Set it accordingly to head in comfortable position.
  2. Snug the straps but don’t set them too tightly.
  3. There should be a considerable clearing between your head and hard surface of the hat.
  4. Always wear the assigned color helmet.
  5. Watch for cracks and damage signs.
  6. Watch for damaged and expired helmets.

Face Sheild & Safety Glasses – Face PPE

Shields and safety glasses play an integral role in face PPE since they protect your eyes and face from grinding particles. Eyes are one of most sensitive part of your body and you should use face shield as well as safety glasses during:

  1. Drilling
  2. Grinding
  3. Welding

Insulation Equipment

Depending on your working environment you might need some or multiple protection layers. List of most commonly used insulation equipment includes:

  1. Insulation gloves
  2. Insulation mats
  3. Insulation ladders

Insulation gloves: They are required for providing protection against various mechanical and electrical risks. Depending on the circuit and environment you might need leather, fire resistant, insulated or dielectric gloves. Following points should be kept while using gloves:

  1. Carefully observe the gloves for damaged insulation before using.
  2. You should identify which type of glove is suitable for you.
  3. Always check expiration date of gloves.
  4. Store your gloves in safe and reliable cases.
  5. Regularly perform air test on gloves.

Insulation mats: Dielectric carpets or insulator mats are used in high voltage environment for isolating people from live parts of electrical equipment. Such mats should always be considered where a shock is possible.

Insulation ladders: It is often preferable to use good insulation ladders in industrial environments. While such ladders ensure your safety under normal conditions, they also ensure your protection against high voltage spikes. Many manufacturers are designing insulation ladders that can resist spikes as high as 50 kV.

Gas Detection Devices

Many time your crew has to make their way inside confined areas. Gas detectors are ideal protection source in such applications. Modern gas detectors are multiple detectors that can detect CO2, H2S, SO2, NO2, O2, CO gases within microseconds.

Non Conduction Rods

Such rods and hooks are designed to pull a person out of dangerous conditions while keeping yourself safe from shocks. A safety hook for 33 kV substation is shown below:

Earthing Clamps and Fittings

Sometimes the electrical installations are earthed to mains water and gas services. An earthing clamp is secured to the pipe by crossbanding it. While earth clamp is not a typical PPC you are wearing, it plays a fundamental role in protection.

Related:

Safety Signs

Safety signs should be used in working areas for informing the crew about different conditions and warnings that are applicable to a particular area. You might need safety signs to:

  1. Warn users about particular danger
  2. Make users aware of nature of work and associated hazards
  3. Advise users about certain conditions
  4. To restrict a user from doing something
  5. To provide information about mandatory devices

Types of safety signs

Safety signs are of different shapes:

  1. Triangular: Warnings
  2. Round: Regulations
  3. Square/Triangular: Instructions or additional information.

Color usage in safety signs

They are also used in different colors:

  1. Red: Fire related, No go area
  2. Blue: Instruction
  3. Yellow: Hazard indication
  4. Green: Indiction of safety such as emergency exits

Safety Shoes – PPE for Shoe

The safety shoes keep your feet safe in case an object falls over it. You should remember 5 points before getting a shoe:

  1. Heat resistance
  2. Puncture resistance
  3. Water resistance
  4. Protection against impacts
  5. Slip resistance

Hearing Protection ear muffs

Hearing protection ear muffs should be used in noisy environments such as thermal power stations and all other places where noisy engines are used.

Safety Vest

The safety vest has refractive strips that make your visible and noticed. Safety vests are often classified into three classes:

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