What arc ratings of PPE and protective clothing do you/clients/company use?

4 cal/cm^2
8 cal/cm^2
12 cal/cm^2
25 cal/cm^2
40 cal/cm^2
65 cal/cm^2
100 cal/cm^2
We don't need/use PPE
Something else

We use 8 cal and 40 cal break points right now. I am trying to change 8 cal to 12 cal though; we have a lot of equipment that is in the 8-10 cal incident energy range.

I'm actually thinking of using the new 70E to try to push the idea of knowing the exact rating of your clothing and matching it to the exact incident energy of the equipment. For instance, if your lowest ATPV is your balaclava at 10.5 cal, you could work on any IE up to 10.5.

Agree with the IDEA of matching PPE to incident energy...in fact that seems to be the way things are going.

HOWEVER, maintaining all the labelling is turning into a nightmare for me. I'm pushing for the opposite...to round down to specific "levels" and match the clothing to those levels.

There are some FR shirts that are only rated in the 4-8 cal/cm^2 range. These are most T-shirts and henley shirts ("lineman" shirts). But your basic 12 ounce (or lighter) treated cotton work shirt starts at around 10 cal/cm^2 and goes up from there. It's a little more rare (and the material is thicker) to find 12+ rated shirts but pretty common for "industrial" blue jeans and brown duck pants. So I feel pretty comfortable drawing a line at cal/cm^2 and perhaps as high as 10 cal/cm^2.

However depending on which standard (and year) you are looking at, there is some standards based support for dropping the balaclava and/or face shield below 4-8 cal/cm^2. The 2012 edition still supports this if you read the H/RC table "backwards" for 4 cal/cm^2 but not if you read the text or if you do your own incident energy analysis and follow Annex H. This disappears entirely in 2015 edition so face shields (and balaclavas) are automatic above 1.2 cal/cm^2, and the hood becomes required at 12 cal/cm^2. OSHA on the other hand recently ruled for overhead power line work with much less strict PPE requirements for the head, more in line with 70E-2004. Simultaneously though they also pretty much mandate FR shirts and pants across the board for all distribution work regardless of the incident energy so effectively this is similar to the 70E-2004 table-based standard in terms of PPE.

I agree that it makes more sense to use 12 cal now instead of 8 cal. Our company has also found that it is fairly easy to obtain 8 cal daily wear shirts, but we now have two standard options for 12 cal for the upper body. One option we give employees is a >4 cal long sleeve FR undershirt plus a > 8 cal long sleeve collared button down shirt. The other option is the >8 cal long sleeve collared button down shirt plus a >4 cal lightweight jacket that can be worn on top. Either option essentially means the employee has daily wear plus an additional piece they put on as needed to get to 12 cal.

The last time I looked the common face shields were only rated ~10.5 cal, so even though the 70E PPE for a calculated AF study has a break point at 12 cal, the practical break point was 10.5 cal due to the face shield.

We've shifted our training to allow and encourage employees to use clothing rated for the actual calculated AF value, in conjunction with the other PPE prescribed the for <1.2 cal, 1.2 - 12, and >12 cal ranges. Even though it's a bit more complicated than the old 2004 HRC mindset, most folks are happy to do a bit of arithmetic if it means they can reduce the amount of heavy or scratchy fabric they have to wear for significant periods of time.

Salisbury AS1200 face shields are rated at 12 cal/cm^2. Our current location constraints to a 12 cal standard are the upper body (which a jacket will probably be the best solution to get over the shirt value) and the balaclava's, which are rated at 10.5.