Know the Basics of FR Apparel
FR clothing is designed to protect workers from arc flash and flash fire, two hazards that can cause serious injury or death. In an arc flash, the amount of energy released is “quite significant,” with temperatures reaching between 10,000 and 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit, explains Dan Bowen, technical marketing specialist for DuPont Personal Protection.
“Even though the duration of an arc flash is usually fairly short, on the order of less than 1 second, the amount of intense heat will cause anything combustible to burst into flames almost immediately,” Bowen says. “There’s been a tremendous amount of people injured and killed by arc flash events that suffer badly because the clothing they were wearing caught on fire.”
Bowen explains that workers’ clothing plays a big role in the extent of their injuries in the event of an arc flash, especially if they are wearing a synthetic blend such as polypropylene or nylon blends.
“The challenge with those fabrics is not only will they ignite, but they’ll burn vigorously because they’re plastic,” Bowen says. “They are highly flammable. They melt, they burn, they drip. They make a bad matter much worse.”
When FR clothing is exposed to a heat source and that heat source is then removed, the garment will not continue to burn, Bowen explains. “That’s not to say these things are fire proof. It’s not like wearing cement or steel — they will undergo a physical change — but as soon as the heat source is gone, that fabric won’t burn. It’s designed to provide protection for the worker from that burn injury.”
Scott Margolin, international technical director at Westex Inc. adds that if a worker’s street clothes ignite, the fire and subsequent burn injuries will spread to areas of the body where the arc itself never touched.
“As silly as this sounds, you’re literally better off naked because the body burn injury you would suffer is going to be limited to the areas of the body where the arc hits. [If] your garments ignite, that fire is going to spread very rapidly,” he says. “As soon as the shirt ignites, you’re shifting from survivable or no injury with FR clothing, to potentially or probably fatal injury [without FR clothing] within seconds.”
FR clothing also provides protection through insulation, shielding the body from the heat of the event.
“The analogy that I like to make is you wouldn’t wear a windbreaker out into a blizzard, would you?” Margolin says. “If you know it’s 55 degrees out, you can put a windbreaker on and you’re going to okay. If it’s -55 degrees out, you’re not going to wear that same lightweight jacket — you’re dressing appropriately to that hazard, in this case cold.”
Sources from Workrite Uniform News and EHS Today Magazine- Laura Walters
