A purchasing team specs 600 FR coveralls for a refinery turnaround. Three years and dozens of industrial wash cycles later, part of that order no longer behaves the way it did on day one, and the rep...

A 480 V motor control centre, a maintenance window that is already running late, and a technician racking a breaker out by hand. Nothing in that picture looks violent until the arc establishes. An ar...

Polyester is not fire resistant in its standard form. Plain polyethylene terephthalate, the PET that makes up most workwear linings, hi-vis shells and coveralls, has a limiting oxygen index of roughl...

A 480 V switchgear inspection can expose an electrician to incident energy well above the 1.2 cal/cm² that marks the onset of a second-degree burn. That is why arc flash clothing ratings exist, and w...

The purchase order says: "High-visibility vests, Type R Class 2, ANSI/ISEA 107-2015, 300 units." The quote comes back with garments labelled ANSI/ISEA 107-2020. Accept or reject? Accept it, unless th...

If you specify protective clothing for workers in oil, gas, electrical, or welding environments, you have certainly encountered the terms "fire retardant" and "fire resistant" — and likely wondered w...

A well-control event does not announce itself. On drilling and well servicing locations, a gas kick can reach an ignition source in seconds and produce a flash fire that lasts one to three seconds — ...

A buyer for an oil terminal recently held three quotations for the same 260 g/m² orange workwear fabric. Each supplier described the product in identical words: fire retardant material. Only one cou...

An arc protection suit is an engineering decision, not an inventory item. Its arc rating—the number in cal/cm² printed on the label—must be equal to or greater than the incident energy of the job, an...