PPE

Personal protective equipment

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is anything used or worn by a person to minimise a risk to the person’s health or safety.

  PPE includes items such as:

  eye protection for example, goggles, glasses and face shields

  hearing protection for example, ear plugs and ear muffs

  respiratory protection for example, filter respirators, air line respirators and SCBA

  foot protection for example, safety shoes and boots, spats and rubber gum boots

  head protection for example, hard hats, helmets and broad brimmed hats

  body protection for example, aprons, overalls, gloves and high visibility clothing

  any substance used to protect health, for example, sunscreen.

Using PPE

PPE is one of the least effective ways of controlling risks to health and safety and should only be used:

when there are no other practical control measures available

as an interim measure until a more effective way of controlling the risk can be used

to supplement higher level control measures.