U.S WORKER VISIBILITY PPE REGULATIONS NOW AFFECT ALL ROAD CONTRACTORS (12/22/2010)
By Tim Gardner, 3M Occupational Health and Environmental Safety Division
Any business that has workers performing construction, maintenance and utility work on or near the right-of-way of surface roads must be aware of new PPE requirements.
The 2009 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) revised regulations that, effective December 2011, mandate the use of worker high-visibility PPE on all publicly accessible roads.
Compliance for a broadly defined set of workers routinely exposed to struck-by hazards from traffic and machinery is described in the MUTCD standard text as, "All workers, including emergency responders, within the right-of-way who are exposed either to traffic (vehicles using the highway for the purposes of travel) or to work vehicles and construction equipment within the Temporary Traffic Control zone shall wear high-visibility safety apparel that meets the Performance Class 2 or 3 requirements of the ANSI/ISEA 107-2004."
Garment Options Help Mitigate Risk
ANSI/ISEA 107 Class 2 vests are considered a minimum practice to provide daytime, nighttime and dawn/dusk compliance. A well-known garment use compliance study published in the ISEA Protection Update in 2002, however, pointed out that a lack of style and comfort, and vest designs that hamper job performance, were significant factors that inhibited greater use of high-visibility garments.
The limitations of supplemental vests can be readily addressed with a primary apparel approach: building ANSI 107-compliant high-visibility capability into workwear clothing worn on the job.
For example, in hot climates workers are reluctant to add an ANSI 107 vest as a second garment over their conventional shirt.
But, a high-performance, lighter-weight shirt poses little issue. A wide range of ANSI 107-compliant primary apparel is available in Class 2 and Class 3, including various short and long sleeve shirts, jackets and other insulating or protecting layers, fire and arc resistant garments, and flagger ensembles with short or long pants.
These new apparel options give employers an opportunity to offer workers a more comfortable and feature-filled safety garment to help improve their visibility on the job.
