Personal respiratory protection

Personal respiratory protection should always be the last resort when it comes to protecting individuals, whether in the workplace or the general public. Indeed, it is always advisable to turn first to collective means of protection, seeking to eliminate or reduce exposure risks at source. This recommendation can be applied at industrial level, for example by installing extraction systems in confined spaces, or by redesigning workstations; it becomes more difficult to achieve when the individuals to be protected have to perform tasks in isolated locations, or in excessively large areas, or intervention tasks such as fire-fighting, or even evacuation from a location where a significant risk has arisen.

Whether we're talking about protecting the general public in the city or at home, during DIY projects, or hospital staff where, as we saw recently, the risks of an influenza pandemic were present, it's impossible to ensure collective protection with the same effectiveness as individual protection. The same applies when personal protective equipment is used as work equipment, as in the case of diving equipment.

As we can see, the multiplicity of situations in which these devices represent the only means of protecting individuals, in themselves justify the introduction of rules for the design and testing of respiratory protection equipment. At the design stage, respiratory protective equipment must meet minimum performance requirements.

The tools available to designers are standards, the application of which may be made compulsory by regulations such as European Directive 89/686/EEC on personal protective equipment, OSHA regulations in the USA or others... These regulations require the performance of each type of device to be verified by an independent laboratory before it is placed on the market.

The main performance will be its effectiveness in reducing or eliminating risks for the wearer. As we shall see later on, measuring the actual effectiveness of personal respiratory protection in real working conditions depends on so many factors that it is difficult to really assess its level. Among these factors, particular attention will be paid to the choice of a device and its adaptation to the wearer.

Finally, as the name suggests, respiratory protection is essentially designed to protect the respiratory tract. It can cover all or part of the head, and can be combined with other protective equipment such as clothing or helmets. The designer of such devices will need to take into account all the requirements relating to each type of protection, and ensure that there is no negative interference between each function.