Occupational Health Framework
In occupational safety and health, workplace hazards, which pose a threat to the safety and quality of life of workers, can be mitigated by hazard controls and interventions. The hierarchy of controls is a framework which ranks the types of hazard controls in terms of absolute risk reduction. At the top of the hierarchy are elimination and substitution, which remove the hazard entirely or replaces the hazard with a safer alternative. If elimination or substitution measures cannot be achieved, engineering controls and administrative controls, which seek to design safer mechanisms and coach safer human behavior, are implemented. Personal protective equipment ranks last on the hierarchy of controls, as the workers are regularly exposed to the hazard, with a barrier of protection. The hierarchy of controls is important in acknowledging that while personal protective equipment has tremedous utility, it is not the desired mechanism of control, in terms of worker safety.
In the United States, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 detailed the standards of PPE at the workplace.
Read more about this topic: Personal Protective Equipment
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