Look before you leap
June 1st 2007

When it comes to protecting workers from slips and trips, employers are fundamentally reliant on manufacturers to provide them with footwear that, not only meet their needs, but actually provides the levels of safety that they say it does

To help identify and select PPE appropriate to the task in hand, employers have relied on the use of the EN Standards to help them determine the performance indicators of products required. Like most forms of PPE, where safety footwear is concerned, the EN data is an essential source of information with products having to meet minimum independently tested standards of performance to achieve classification.

Line up 10 pairs of safety footwear in a row and the majority will look and feel the same. That's because the safety features are very often contained within the footwear and out of sight safety toecaps, pierce resistant midsoles, comfort layers and grip performance all phrases and features we are familiar with but rarely physically see.

Instead we rely on the fact that they are there if stated and that they perform.

So can you always rely on the information provided? That's Jal group hoped to try and find out when it conducted tests on one of its and five other base or entry-level products in its own laboratory.

With four test failures in three of the six products tested, the findings would suggest that employers need to be careful that the safety footwear they are providing really will perform to the standards they expect it to.

"We were keen to undertake lab tests on basic, entry level safety footwear products both our own and other products readily available in the market to see if there were any discrepancies between performance claimed and actual performance," said Stuart Thorne of Jal group.

"As we have mirrored CTC tests in our own laboratory, we were keen to take all of the products through the same tests to compare and contrast between each product and against the official standards for EN 345 products.

"It was extremely interesting to see that, despite all of them achieving the EN345 standard, there were such wide variations in results from complete failure through to performance well above the required levels, " added Stuart.

What Tests Were Carried Out? All six products were exposed to the following tests: Antistatic Properties Grip Energy Absorption Toe cap performance Sole Pierce Resistance Abrasion performance of sole contact layer Hardness of the sole contact layer Density of the comfort layer How did they fare? The tests showed that performance levels vary greatly between products of a similar standing. Most worryingly however, were the results of the antistatic, grip and toe cap drop tests.

One of the products tested that claimed to be antistatic failed the test completely recording a test result of 1800 megohms - a full 800 megohms over the 1,000 limit for antistatic footwear.

The same product that failed the antistatic test in such a major way also failed the grip test as did another product. With the grip standard set at .15 under the XPS 73012 test method, where 1mm of oil is added to a steel plate and the footwear placed on the plate and moved back and forth across it with a 60 kg weight exerted on it and the grip provided measured, two products recorded results of .14 and .13 failing the standard.

The 200 joule toecap drop test to test the strength of a toecap when a 20-kilo weight is dropped from a 1 metre height also resulted in a failure by one of the products tested. The minimum standard allows for a 14mm gap to be left by the toecap after impact (leaving enough space to protect the toes). One product tested was right on the 14mm limit and another recorded a 13.5mm rating.

According to Jal Group, whilst the products that failed the tests had achieved the EN345 standard, the research should act as a reminder to those with responsibility for health and safety to delve a little deeper when sourcing crucial PPE.

"Even though every product tested had achieved EN345 we did expect to see some failures before we conducted this in-house research. It's fair to say however that we were surprised to see that half of the products tested recorded a failure on at least one of the tests. The antistatic failure was incredible almost twice the minimum standard.

"Whilst some of those failures were close to the minimum standard required, they still recorded a failure, which raises obvious concerns. Other products that passed all of the tests undertaken were significantly higher than the minimum EN345 requirements.

"As with any test procedure there will always be variations from test to test but we feel that what this serves to highlight is that health and safety managers need to be completely confident in the products they are specifying" concludes Stuart.

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