Personal protective equipment (PPE) is always employed when engineered or organizational measures are not sufficient to protect employees as they carry out their tasks. PPE must provide its users with adequate protection against hazards, and must not itself harm or endanger them.

The study “Standardization in the field of personal protective equipment” (KAN Report 12) conducted in 1996/1997 established the progress of European standardization and analysed the level of safety attained. Four years on, KAN has once more commissioned a study for assessment of the standardization of PPE, the results of which are now available.

EU Directive 89/686/EEC and its amendments 93/95/EEC and 96/58/EC form the basis for standardization of PPE, for its testing and certification, and thereby also for its CE marking. The question whether the basic requirements of the directive are fulfilled by standards with regard to the protection of health and safety is therefore relevant not only to the design of PPE by the manufacturer, but also to conformity assessment in the context of certification, and to market surveillance.

Cable reels (or cable drums) are frequently the subject of complaints by market surveillance bodies. Cable reels with a removable, flexible cable present particular problems, as they do not fall within the scope of EN 61242, and are frequently distributed with unacceptable safety technology.

The hands-on perspective of employees is often given insufficient consideration in the discussion of occupational health and safety. Although the Machinery Directive made inclusion of both sides of industry in standardization activity mandatory from the outset, many opportunities continue to be unexploited. An innovative project in Italy indicates alternative paths which may be followed.

The revised General Product Safety Directive came into force on 15 January 2002 and must be transposed by the Member States into national law by 15 January 2004 (reported in KANBRIEF 4/01). A working group has now agreed upon priorities for standards in support of the directive from the perspective of occupational health and safety.