What Should We Pay Attention To When Choosing A Flame Retardant Raincoat?

Flame retardant safety workwear is an essential requisite for various industries both for the worker’s safety and efficiency when the workplaces involve many hazards. Besides, each industry needs to comply with Safe work practices.

Industries that may need flame retardant workwear:

Every workplace presents different situations and different threats to the workers’ safety. And hence, there is no single personal protective equipment (PPE) that can serve all industries equally.

When talking about flame retardant raincoat, as the name indicates two major areas are addressed by the workwear; one is flame and the other is rain. Though it may sound weird that the PPE should either be rainproof or it should be flame retardant. How come flames can harm during wet rain? Or when there is a flame, why may one need protection from the rain.

Well, there are certainly multiple industries where workers have to work in all weather conditions. And then the work they are doing may pose threats like hazards. This reveals that they need protection from both kinds of threats.

There can be a threat from flames, flash fires, electric arcs in the work area, and high wind and rain at the same time. Outdoor workplaces with inclement weather are the ones that need flame retardant raincoats.

Again, the question is that how can a single kind of garment have both properties. The best answer can be, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” And similarly, to prevent accidents and risks to the lives of workers and to enable them to work comfortably without affecting productivity, flame retardant workwear came into designing, development, and fabrication.

Now the industries where you may need to equip your workers with flame retardant raincoats include but are not limited to oil and gas extraction industries, industries with electric utilities, and other kinds of energized equipment.

Other areas are shipyards, highways, electrical maintenance sites, construction sites, farms, telecommunications, chemical processing plants, recycling plants, solar plants, chemical manufacturing plants, offshore platforms, pharmaceuticals, quality control laboratories, and other sorts of laboratories, aerospace labs, and more. You’ll need them for all engineers and support workers.

Points of consideration while selecting the best flame retardant raincoats:

Once you know that you have to provide protective flame retardant raincoats to your workers, the selection comes next. With many companies manufacturing workwear, there is a varied range of products, and the selection process may become daunting.

Here, this post intends to help you in the selection process that caters to all the needs of the worker and fulfills other criteria as per the workplace.

#1. Standardization: All personal protective equipment pieces are not standardized products and hence may have loopholes. Since it is about the safety of the worker, the product you choose must be equipped with all the necessities for retaining its flame retardant properties and for being rainproof.

Always check for the certification to which the product complies. Certification is an assurance of protection against the hazards it has to. There are two types of certifications considered as industry standards for flame retardant raincoats for a better understanding.

These are:

1. ASTM F1891: This certification ensures protection from electric arcs and to ensure this, they are checked for its arc rating, the percentage of energy that is blocked (heat attenuation factor – HAF), and break-open threshold that signifies the time taken for the outer layer to break through to the next material layer. Besides, ASTM F1981 ensures that the flame retardant raincoat will withhold from getting ignited, molten, drip, or breaking open during a typical arc flash besides keeping the worker dry in rain.
2. ASTM F2733: This standard ensures protection against flash fires, hot liquid splashes, and refrains from igniting, melting, dripping, or shrinking besides keeping the worker dry in rain.

#2. Durability: Since the safety workwear comes at a considerable cost, you must know beforehand up how many washings can the flame retardant raincoat endure. It is necessary that you buy a durable item and not one-time wear.

Durable items though may initially come at a higher price, but when you’ll weigh it against single-use pieces, you’ll find out the certified items will be cost-efficient. Once bought, they have a life of at least 50 industrial washings and up to 75 domestic washings.

So, durability can be confirmed through certification.

#3. High visibility: Since we are talking about raincoats and rain, it is evident that the visibility in rain or rainy weather gets low. Other accompanying conditions before and after may include fog, smog, smoke, and dim light. All of these diminish the probability of spotting out the worker.

• Daytime visibility:

 To have the worker visible during the daytime in bad weather conditions, it is best to have the flame retardant workwear in high-visibility fluorescent colors.

• To check whether the product you’ve picked up ensures maximum visibility at any hour of the day, check for the certification standard EN ISO 20471. 
• Another certification is ANSI/ISEA 107, American National Standard for High-Visibility Safety Apparel and Accessories. This standard provides guidelines and ensures the choice of color of the apparel that provides daytime visibility enhancement.
• Nighttime visibility:
• For dark times and night, flame retardant raincoats can be equipped with reflectors.
• Or they can be having reflective trims. Reflective trims are also checked for their brightness, amount, and placement. If you are going for reflective trims, ensure that there must be 360-degree reflectivity.
• Also, check for the designs since the gaps may vary accordingly. The best placement of the reflective trims is the shoulder area.
• The distance between multiple bands must be minimum. The distance from the edge of the garment should also be minimum.
• Dirt-resistant:

Dust, dirt, and other particles associated with the working conditions may also decrease the worker’s visibility and therefore if you go for Teflon-treated workwear. It will make the flame retardant workwear dirt-resistant.

#4. Breathable:

The flame retardant raincoats come in both breathable and non-breathable fabrics. Though the choice may vary depending upon other parameters, yet it is better to prefer breathable fabrics since they ensure that the body heat that the worker generates while working makes its way out and the worker’s body can cool itself while ensuring protection from rain and other hazards.

• Materials like PVC which are used to make raincoats tend to store heat. So, in warm weather or conditions, it may get a little uncomfortable since they aren’t breathable.
• You may wonder, how can the raincoat keep the rain outside and the moisture from sweat is unable to keep the worker soaked. But it is possible by using semi-permeable membranes such as PTFE. They keep the water on the outside from getting in and help soak the moisture generated by the human body inside to evaporate through the material. This makes them breathable but yet they have a limitation of not being able to fulfill other criteria for working in industrial environments and have low efficiency in highly humid environments.
• Wet out has to be dealt with and so is the probability of getting wet in.

So, the best kind of breathable flame retardant raincoat is the one that uses a composite membrane, the multiple layers of which have specialized functions. This creates the balance by keeping out the rain and yet let the body sweat evaporate through moisture management technology. This is the additional layer that works alongside the composite layer to keep the worker dry out and dry in.

#5. Comfort: The most important thing besides protection is comfort. It is something that cannot be compromised with just like safety. Once the hazard protection has been addressed, next is comfort.

Since the workwear is to be woven while working and the work environment is risky, the worker will be free at mind only if he knows he is safe and can work only if he feels comfortable. Discomfort can be distressing for the workers and the employers, it will hamper the productivity and efficiency of the work done.

• You cannot control the height, weight, and other physical variables of your workers, but you can provide them with the best fitting equipment so that they feel comfortable. Choose the right sizes for the right fits or you can even get them custom-designed, the process at which Xinke Protective Technology Co. Ltd. has both expertise and experience.
• Besides, the size, the comfort has to address the different necessities. Rain must not enter or the worker will get wet even while wearing the raincoat. This is a very common problem because many people do not look at the requirements close enough only to reduce the cost.

Xinke Protective Technology Co. Ltd. has been manufacturing the best quality flame retardant rainwear for a long. And not just the raincoats, the production lines are manufacturing more than 500 types of protective workwear clothing. Their customization option makes them the best choice since all criteria as needed may be selected.

And the worker is happy, comfortable, and safe while you have the satisfaction of complying with the guidelines for Occupational Health and Safety.