Assessment of the protection efficiency and comfort of personal protective equipment in real conditions of use.

The lack of scientific and technical knowledge in certain complex fields, together with schedule constraints, have lead to adopt in EN standards insufficiently validated tests, relying sometimes on an empirical approach. Thus, even personal protective equipment (PPE) with positive results in tests required by the standards can nevertheless prove to be unsatisfactory when used at work. Several research projects have already been carried out on equipment, fall arresting systems, protective clothing, and gloves by several health and safety institutes in Europe. The results would suggest practical solutions to improve the representativity of several European Committee for Standardization (CEN) test methods and to focus more on informing and training workers on the manner of wearing PPE, in particular respiratory protective equipment or hearing protectors.