Wash cycle

It’s the gear you wear: personal protection equipment (PPE) keeps harmful substances away — until you strip off the gear to be washed and cleaned. And that’s where the risk lies. Paradoxically, you can become contaminated by the decontamination itself. Here are some simple practices to avoid the pitfalls.

Respirators, gloves, boots and other protective gear can be tricky to clean. Respirators are full of nooks and crannies where dirt gathers. Boots may have soles with deep grooves; gloves often have folds and stitches; helmets and hardhats might have vents and slots for earmuffs, inviting grime.

Exposure time

The critical moment arrives when you remove the equipment from your head and body. While you have been perfectly safe inside the gear, the equipment itself has been directly exposed to harmful substances that collect on the surfaces and can easily migrate to your body when you take it off after the shift.

This goes for all industrial operations where breathing protection and other equipment is worn, such as mining, metal processing, chemical industry, demolition and remediation, police and emergency response and many others. The main ways of direct exposure to hazards are:

• inhalation (by breathing in harmful materials collecting on equipment and clothing)
• skin absorption (by touching the protective gear with bare skin)
• swallowing (by eating or drinking before removing the gear).

Way down the list

Decontamination and cleaning often end up as a low priority in the workplace. Sometimes, protective equipment and clothing are simply stashed away without any cleaning whatsoever: why go to the trouble when the next shift is just around the corner? It even happens that soiled protective gear is worn to the toilet, recreation area or canteen.

Such casualness can have serious consequences. If work routines and work environments entail exposure to harmful substances, protective gear must be removed safely, and then cleaned thoroughly — every time. Different workplaces may opt for different solutions, such as dry-brushing or the use of external showers while still wearing the gear. After this initial cleaning, safe removal should be done — without exposure to anyone involved — followed by thorough decontamination, depending on how harmful the pollutants may be.

Habitual blindness

It is not uncommon for cleaning routines to be started by one person and completed by another. All involved should be aware of the possible hazards and the correct routines. Dedicated cleaning personnel must be familiar with both decontamination procedures and hazardous materials handling. No-one in the workplace, least of all the users of protective equipment themselves, must be allowed to fall victim to what is known as ‘habitual blindness’. Lapses in the safety chain include:

• premature removal of protective equipment
• carelessness (tired after the shift, ‘job’s done’ attitude)
• culture (‘Why start now? We’ve been doing it like this for years.’)
• logistics (design of workplace, storage, cleaning facilities)
• lack of knowledge (genuine or deliberate ignorance)
• behaviour (peer awareness, ‘macho’ image)
• mean, lean, clean regime.
   

Industrial operations with big workforces requiring large numbers of respirators and other protective equipment have several options when it comes to decontamination, such as specialised cleaning personnel or third-party washing facilities. One relatively recent development is the introduction of specialised decontamination machines capable of washing great quantities of different equipment in a very short time. Such washing machines, often called ‘extractors’, have previously been used mainly by fire brigades, but are now finding their way into industrial settings.

The machines do not get tired or blasé and do not find that certain equipment is ‘too tricky’ to clean. They can wash dozens, if not hundreds, of items in an hour: breathing apparatus, helmets, respirators, gloves and boots. Wash cycles are typically only a few minutes in duration.

Washing machine for respirators, helmets, gloves and boots. Image credit: ©Granuldisk/SoloRescue

Wash it, THEN wear it

The best decontamination method and cleaning routine are a numbers game. How many items are there to wash? How often? How much time is available? What about cleaning costs in the long term?

But most importantly, workers’ health and wellbeing are not a game. In many workplaces, effective and efficient decontamination of personal protection equipment cannot be ignored or underestimated.

Top image credit: ©iistock.com/Gwengoat